Skepticism

EVENTS

Stuff that annoyed me this morning

There’s nothing wrong about being pretty, or sexy, or shopping, or being interested in traditionally girly things—but there is a big problem when that’s the only option you’re given. I know I’d be stressed if I were constantly told I’m less of a man if I’m not playing football or working in a manly occupation that involved large wrenches and heavy industrial tools, so I can sympathize with the limited choices given women: oh, you aren’t wearing a bikini on your lithe body with the large breasts? Then you’re an ugly dyke. You aren’t planning a career as a homemaker and mother? You just want to be a man.

Read the description. It’s appallingly shallow. It makes me want to run out and buy John Madden’s football video game, so I can learn what it takes to be a True Man.

That’s one side of the problem: pressure to conform to a ridiculously narrow set of values. Here’s the other: the absence of support and recognition when you try to pursue other better, greater interests.

There’s just something wrong with our society. Women, get out there and fix it, OK?

It’s not the job of women to get out there and fix it, PZ. It’s not a women’s issue, it’s an issue for all of us. Our society as a whole is lessened, we are all worse off. As beneficiaries of the power imbalance, men don’t have an obvious incentive to get out there and fix it. Nevertheless, it is part of our responsibility.

I’m a gamer. I also have a vagina. I like to play zombie-killing games, post apocalyptic survival games but also enjoy dress up games. But I stay away from anything that tries to tell me what to do and how to act/look.

Shit. That bothered me more than I thought it would. I know how hard it is going to be raising my little girl in this deluge of shit. That just brought it home a little more.

I hope my wife and I can instill in our daughter the self confidence to not fall for that bullshit. I hope she learns, and finds the strength, to forge her own way in life. I hope she sticks to things that truly interest her, not what she feels she should be interested in.

And was I the only one that had to hold back from attempting to punch the MRA in the video through my computer?

“It’s a very very sad commentary on the values
of our culture, when shooting a ball into a basket
is more laudable, more praiseworthy, more
admirable and more rewarded than teasing out some
fundamental truths about the natural world or
finding a cure for AIDS or Cancer.”

I work for an educational video games company, making games for the juvenile market. This is something we fight about with every single client. “Well, we want girls to play it, so.. can you dumb down the science a bit? Maybe make it all pink-palette? Oh, and this vocab list is too hard…” “NGRAAAAH NiOg SMASH.”

As a female who was a tomboy as a kid an a very successful athlete in college, I’ve only recently come to realize that I am a little misogynistic myself. The cause? Growing up in a world that didn’t value a female who had my “masculine” interests and goals. It’s no wonder that “girly girl” behavior (to which I was expected to conform) strikes me as vacuous and annoying now. Perhaps, if my innate tendencies to be athletic and smart were truly validated as a girl, I might not have such a negative reaction to that behavior now.

1. At first glance the cartoon woman looks like she’s wearing underpants on her head. Was planning on making some amusing comment about that until …

2. My jaw just literally fell when I heard the response to what’s wrong about a female president, “aside from the PMS and moodswings?” What. The. Fuck?!

That’s one side of the problem: pressure to conform to a ridiculously narrow set of values. Here’s the other: the absence of support and recognition when you try to pursue other better, greater interests

Oh, tell me about it. I’m a geek, an occasional gamer, a major sci-fi fan. I rarely wear make-up, much prefer trousers over skirts, laugh at woo, etc. I know I’m seen as the slightly odd one and, I admit, I play up to that as I’d rather be odd than conform.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with dressing up in games. Pimping out an avatar is a big part of most rpgs and something even the manliest of men engage in when creating their avatar for X-Box Live. It can be (for some unknown reason to me) fun trying out different hats on the large headed cartoon you.

This game…I just can’t get behind. May have something to do with the quest objectives. Somehow

– Start the Cookiegirl course.
– Go to the hair stylist, pink just came into fashion…
– Buy at least two more items you like from shops in the Mall

To be fair, men are also constrained by sexist images in society. We are told that we are less men for not playing sports, or for working in certain occupations. I just had my mother tell me that I had to cut my hair for her birthday party next week because she wanted a family photo in which her sons “look like men.”

Granted, sexism hurts women far more than it hurts men- but it hurts everybody. So we should all have an interest in working to change it.

Is it just me or are the toy aisles and children’s clothing much worse now then they were twenty or thirty years ago ? I hate the pink aisle and have you tried to buy pants for a little girl that wants pockets? It is almost impossible! Not to mention that everything is cut to fit way too tightly and to emphasize curves that are not even there on a toddler body. #$%&#*$&@$%@#$& !!!

What the hell has gone wrong over the past few decades ? I cope with my daughter playing princess because she also does other things, but I seriously worry about what is going to happen in school. She is smart and cute – so which one is she going to be valued for ?

It works the other way too. Being told that you’re “too pretty” to be a lesbian is the most offensive thing I get on a regular basis. The people who tell me this (men and women) don’t seem to understand that what they think is a compliment just informed me that something unchangeable about me is only for “ugly people” who are worth less.

Games this vacuous have little appeal for women in the age group represented – they’re all about teaching/reinforcing gender roles to children. This is just the digitization of trying on mommy’s makeup/dressing Barbie up to go on a date. That kind of thing has been commercialized and turned into a “game” for years (see: Pretty Pretty Princess, any of those creepy disembodied almost-lifesize doll heads you’re supposed to make up and style…), but it kind of takes something like this, that makes the purpose of the whole enterprise so explicit, to shock us. Little girl smashing Barbie and Ken’s heads together to make them “kiss” at the end of their “date”? Normal. Little girl clicking a button to make a digital avatar “flirt”? Shocking!

So, I guess my point is, this is nothing new. The only novelty is, perhaps, the creators/marketers’ blithe obliviousness to how backwards and offensive this setup sounds when you’re up-front about it.

(Although in saying that, even this jaded girl cringed at the part about how much money your boyfriend gives you a week..)

Did anyone recognize the douchecanoe MRA that BOR was talking to? I’ve seen the comments here and chalk that up to the Internet Factor, but to see one in the wild is quite shocking. I know big brave man talk like that on Internet, but to see a real life asshat was really nauseating.

PZ, I contend that males are put under similar pressures, especially during formative years. Like cooking? Quit being a pussy and go outside and play football. Interested in clothing? All the clothing you need is a pair of dirty steel toed boots and some jeans. Go fight, go conquer, provide everything for everyone.

The solution here is bigger than just focusing on the plight of one gender. Western society needs a complete abolishment of gender roles, gender identity and expectations associated with those roles and identities.

People can scream until they’re blue in the face about sexism against women or roles being carved for women, but they won’t go away until roles for men are also gotten rid of, otherwise the fallback role society tries to put women into will be the stuff men aren’t expected to do in their roles.

My sixteen year old son and his female buddies pretty much spend their free time as, 4 Mary said, playing “zombie-killing games, post apocalyptic survival games”, paintball, rugby, etc.

Sheez, I wouldn’t dare suggest to any of these girls that they should go do something feminine ’cause I really do like my balls and would like to keep them intact. Hell, I wouldn’t even trust my son’s zombie-killing-psyched buddies with not helping the girls remove said balls for making that type of misogynistic comment, and I’d deserve it.

Thus, while my kid and his friends are really screwed up, they’ve got this one right. Just commenting.

Definitely a venture for all of us to push against. I remember my daughter getting pushed into the niche of “pushy” or “bossy” just because she is strong willed. Of course, a boy would be exhibiting “leadership” when they exhibit the same traits…which is how the discussion went with that teacher that year (a woman who apparently didn’t get that she was continuing the legacy gender roles). We didn’t hear those terms describing our daughter again from that teacher, and, fortunately, she didn’t press the issue with our daughter directly.

If we want things like this to change, then we need to push back against all the little things as well as the big things. Need to push back against the jokes that paint women with this brush. Need to push back against the subtle comments as much as the outright sexist comments. Be the person that we want others to be.

Raising a daughter is especially challenging. I regularly encourage my daughter to allow her gender to be fluid and not constrained by the expectations of this society. It’s a regular focus to find clothing, toys, and the books that don’t coerce her into being little ms barbie.

The cause? Growing up in a world that didn’t value a female who had my “masculine” interests and goals. It’s no wonder that “girly girl” behavior (to which I was expected to conform) strikes me as vacuous and annoying now.

Being young sucks all around, I think. I was a “girly girl” and instead felt as if all the pressure was towards being brave, fearless, and good at sports. Of course, I wasn’t particularly good at being a girly-girl either (not pretty or flirty.) A fair number of children and teens may be walking around under the dark impression that others don’t approve of them whatever the case may be.

Years ago I read about a study that asked adolescent girls if they considered themselves a “tomboy.” The proportion who said “yes” was astonishingly high — something like 80-90%. If that result is representative, it does seem to suggest that the stigma against ‘masculine’ interests and goals might not be that strong.

I disagree. Men are just as socially constrained by gender roles as women, probably moreso. Women have a hard time when they want to live a life traditionally reserved for men. True, but it’s much easier than in the past, i.e., it’s actually possible. Men, on the other hand, have a much harder time if they want to life a life traditionally reserved for women. Men feel obligated to work long hours, to sacrifice time to enjoy life with family and friends, and as a result suffer more disease and earlier death than women.

…but it hurts everybody. So we should all have an interest in working to change it.

PZ, I contend that males are put under similar pressures, especially during formative years. Like cooking? Quit being a pussy and go outside and play football. Interested in clothing? All the clothing you need is a pair of dirty steel toed boots and some jeans. Go fight, go conquer, provide everything for everyone.

Although this is true as well, keep in mind that the main way to put down a guy who does not conform is to compare him to a girl. So even when boys are teased for not being manly enough, the language implies femininity being inferior to masculinity. So the problem is still mostly sexism towards women. When femininity no longer is considered inferior, then where is the insult?

There’s nothing wrong about being pretty, or sexy, or shopping, or being interested in traditionally girly things—but there is a big problem when that’s the only option you’re given.

I’m raising 3 daughters, and of course I am sensitive to the pressures on them to be girly. When our son (second child) was born, his uncle said “now I have someone to take paint balling,” to which I responded, “and why couldn’t you take [eldest]?”

Of course, as you said, there is nothing wrong with being interested in typical girly things. My eldest daughter collects skulls and loves biology, and has no interest in fashion at all (though she does like necklaces). My middle daughter likes princesses and dresses. Neither is “better.”

Anyone else seen the new TV commercial (for Tide detergent, I think) in which a mother is lamenting her (5ish) daughter’s predilection for cargo pants and playing with building blocks? While the little girl finishes building her structure, the ad ends with the mother saying, patronizingly, “Another car garage honey? looks great!”

The ad really bothered me that they were portraying a real problem (gender type-casting in young children) as though it were some silly suburban idiosyncracy.

@Species8472 I don’t think that people are necessarily implying masculinity is superior in that situation. I remember when I was in high school, there was an overweight cheer-leader with incredibly wide shoulders who went hunting during rifle season. The other cheerleaders called her a dyke and started “taking bets” on whether or not she had a penis for exhibiting masculine characteristics.

I don’t think being called out on gender roles is a product of sexism towards on gender or another, or perceived superiority, so much as a societal expectation to conform to what is understood traditionally to be your dictated role in society.

That being said, life would be 100% better for everyone if there were no such roles or traditions.

So even when boys are teased for not being manly enough, the language implies femininity being inferior to masculinity. So the problem is still mostly sexism towards women. When femininity no longer is considered inferior, then where is the insult?

No way. When a tomboy, or an asprining politician, businesswoman, etc. is teased/mocked for being too masculine, does this somehow imply that men are inferior to women, even though it’s usually the men doing the teasing and mocking? I don’t think so. It’s bucking social norms that affects us all.

(I don’t disagree that woman are considered inferior by a great number of people. I just disagree with your theory here.)

So even when boys are teased for not being manly enough, the language implies femininity being inferior to masculinity. So the problem is still mostly sexism towards women. When femininity no longer is considered inferior, then where is the insult?

No way. When a tomboy, or an asprining politician, businesswoman, etc. is teased/mocked for being too masculine, does this somehow imply that men are inferior to women, even though it’s usually the men doing the teasing and mocking? I don’t think so. It’s bucking social norms that affects us all.

(I don’t disagree that woman are considered inferior by a great number of people. I just disagree with your theory here.)

PZ, I contend that males are put under similar pressures, especially during formative years. Like cooking? Quit being a pussy and go outside and play football. Interested in clothing? All the clothing you need is a pair of dirty steel toed boots and some jeans. Go fight, go conquer, provide everything for everyone.

I can sort of see that. I am male and have been cooking since I was 8 years old. I suck at football, when I am occasionally forced to play it, and I don’t like watching it (but my wife loves it). I dress well and I like buying clothes.
By and large most other men I meet don’t like me. We have nothing in common. Five years in the Army, even, and I didn’t make a single male friend. But I assure you I have many female friends who all respect me.

It seems like men enforce this shit on other men, just as women enforce this shit on other women. Personally, I just don’t associate with men who have a problem with people like me. I’m not saying that women don’t influence men and vice-versa, but yeah. Everyone is to blame here.

Sad to see this kind of crap still out there, but I have to agree with wishyouwerehere @23. The kid’s are alright, at least in some places. Here’s a tale to illustrate

I took my youngest son to go watch some kids jump their bikes at a city owned bike park with a mad series of dirt piles, you know, so the whippersnappers can fracture their bones as much as they like. There was one kid there who was clearly more enthusiastic than skilled. Probably 9 or 10 years old, this kid biffed it a bunch of times trying to catch as much air as possible. Covered in dust and dirt and scrapped up knees and all his buds standing by cheering him on. Every time he crashed he jumped up and shouted excitedly about how much air he got. His pals, some of whom were much better skilled, were super jacked at his efforts even though mostly he crashed. It was nice to see a group of kids so supportive and accepting of each other.

So anyway this beat up, scrapped up, bloody kneed kid rides over to my boy who was watching them with rapt attention. He skidded to stop in front of my son. He just wanted to talk and show my boy his bike. My boy was SO happy that the big guys would pay attention to him.

When my son asked the kid his name he said “Rachel”.

Holy crap. After watching all her daredevilry and fearlessness the old man in me just assumed the kid was a boy. What a dickhead, eh? THIS is what growing up in the patriarchy does to one.

Anyway, my son wasn’t in the least surprised that the kid was a girl. Rachel’s friends came skidding up and made her smile so my son could see the hardware the dentist had to put in her mouth to fix the teeth she’d knocked loose the week before riding the same dirt park.

What a cool grrl, eh? I wonder what a fine woman she’ll make. Reminds me of the song

“This little squirrel I used to be
Slammed her bike down the stairs.
They put silver where her teeth had been;
Silver baby, she grins and grins”

@shojiburo
Why do you disagree with the reasoning? After all, don’t you see what the language is biased towards? If a male is outside of gender role, they are considered “feminine”, as if being a female is worse than being a male. The reason there is these idiotic narrow gender roles for males is because of sexism against females.

Years ago I read about a study that asked adolescent girls if they considered themselves a “tomboy.” The proportion who said “yes” was astonishingly high — something like 80-90%. If that result is representative, it does seem to suggest that the stigma against ‘masculine’ interests and goals might not be that strong.

I don’t know if you are younger than I am but things have changed quite a bit in the last 20 years as far as women and athleticism. I’m in my mid-forties and have seen things change for the better during my lifetime, though there is still a long way to go. Muscles on girls used to be strange and invite all sorts of Amazonian, steroid and sexual orientation jokes. I refused to wear a tank top as a teenager because I had well developed arm muscles from swimming and didn’t want to hear the jokes. I still swim competitively and I now wear tank tops all the time and get all kinds of positive comments on my arms. Yes, things have gotten better. Title IX is largely responsible for that, IMO.

@Sally Strange – Gender roles for both genders need to be abolished, because expectations placed on women and men, hurt everyone, not just those the expectations or roles are placed on. Arguing who is hurt more is a moot point, akin to arguing is racism is worse for Native Americans or African Americans.

Here is an example of how gender roles placed on men can negatively effect women. Imagine you and I get married. You go on become a successful software developer, you make $70k/yr. I become a construction worker, and I pull $30k/yr. I will be actively mocked by everyone in the world (well, the unenlightened anyway) for making less money than my wife. It creates pressure for me to try to get you to stop working, or to earn less, maybe by trying to persuade you to stay home with kids or something similar.

You’re now in a situation, where you can keep your job, knowing it will cause lots of mockery and stress towards the person you married, or you can concede to my requests and commit career suicide.

Trying to eliminate sexism, while only advocating for women is like trying to eliminate racism, but only advocating for African Americans.

I work for an educational video games company, making games for the juvenile market. This is something we fight about with every single client. “Well, we want girls to play it, so.. can you dumb down the science a bit? Maybe make it all pink-palette? Oh, and this vocab list is too hard…” “NGRAAAAH NiOg SMASH.”

It really pains me to hear that you have to deal with people like that. I remember seeing some show about the history of model trains that mentioned one attempt to market to girls that consisted of painting the trains pink. I also remember a stink that was raised in the blogosphere about some girl-targeting telescopes and microscopes that were painted pink and had lower magnification than the “vanilla” models.

—

On the topic of non-educational games, I got annoyed with Metroid: Other M (Spoilers below!)

In the course of the game, there’s a flashback to the time Samus was in the military. Her CO (and father figure), Adam Malkovich has to order part of the spaceship jettisoned, otherwise it’ll destroy the whole ship in a few minutes. Unfortunately, Adam’s son is in the part to be jettisoned. Samus objects, desperately pleading for permission to rescue him, but Adam jettisons the part before it explodes. By itself, this scene’s okay with me. For a young, inexperienced, and idealistic person, it’s understandable to react that way to such a hard decision. This sort of thing is supposed to be a set up for showing character growth, by putting that character in a situation where they have to make a similar decision.

In the game’s present, Samus is working with Adam again after leaving the military. At the end of the game, Adam has a plan that involves him fighting Metroids in one part of the ship, preventing any from escaping before that part of the ship can be jettisoned and destroyed. Samus has to remain on the ship and fight Ridley.

If I were writing the scenario, Samus and Adam would have an argument, with Adam giving convincing reasons why his plan is the only workable scenario. Samus would try to argue for something that gets them both out alive without letting Metroids overrun the galaxy, but she’d see reason and reluctantly agree that Adam has to sacrifice himself. Samus would be the one to seal Adam off, showing that she’s grown as a person and can make tough decisions.

The way the creators wrote out the scenario was about the worst way possible: Instead of arguing it out, Adam surprises Samus, stuns her, and describes his plan while she can barely move and seals himself off into the Metroid area, leaving Samus to give a tearful goodbye through a window. That’s bad enough since it smacks down the chance to show that Samus has grown as a character. When you consider that Samus is a woman, it adds subtext of an authoritative male “taking charge and slapping some sense into the hysterical woman.”

Another terrible scene was where she had a freakout when Ridley showed up, even though she killed him at least three or four times at that point in the game timeline.

Samus is supposed to a badass who fights space pirates and doesn’t afraid of anything.

i’m hearing a lot of responses that say yes the pressure is there to conform to the societal stereotype, but I’m not seeing any that say I conform to the societal stereotype because I have no choice. If you listen to the replies here, one gets the impression that those who wish to buck the stereotype can just buck the stereotype as they choose.

Granted the pressure often amounts to bullying, and in some cultures the stereotypes are enforced through violence, but if an the folks replying here can avoid adhering to the stereotype at will, does that mean the people who abopt the stereotype are trapped against their will?

@zerple
You are missing the point! What’s at the root of all of these narrow gender roles, including for males? It is the patriarchy. That is what we have to attack if we want to eliminate these narrow gender roles. We are not saying that gender roles should be abolished ONLY because it is worse on women. No one said that. But don’t you think the fact that these things are worse for women relevant? Because that is what is at the core of it all.

@Sally Strange – Like it or not, money is a finite resource. Someone’s gain in money, is someone else’s loss in money. I wasn’t commenting on the morality of that, so much as pointing out that it inevitably happens, then there was a troll explosion from people arguing against a point I wasn’t making.

Aside from that, your comment is a non-sequitur. Have no point? Just bring up something unrelated. Woohoo.

Here is an example of how gender roles placed on men can negatively effect women. Imagine you and I get married. You go on become a successful software developer, you make $70k/yr. I become a construction worker, and I pull $30k/yr. I will be actively mocked by everyone in the world (well, the unenlightened anyway) for making less money than my wife. It creates pressure for me to try to get you to stop working, or to earn less, maybe by trying to persuade you to stay home with kids or something similar.

You’re now in a situation, where you can keep your job, knowing it will cause lots of mockery and stress towards the person you married, or you can concede to my requests and commit career suicide.

If you listen to the replies here, one gets the impression that those who wish to buck the stereotype can just buck the stereotype as they choose.

First you have to realize those stereotypes exist. Then, acknowledging that you have unknowingly conformed to stupid or dangerous stereotypes may not be easy. Ask people who have said that they have chosen to act as they wish, despite the stereotyping, if they had it easy. I’m sure some did, but I bet there is going to be a large number of people who didn’t. It depends on the type of person you are, on how much support you have from your family or friends. Anyway, it’s definitely not as easy as it sounds to you.

No seriously, why is the ridicule and mockery of someone because their wife is more successful the woman’s problem? You know what’s a good solution? Getting friends who are decent human beings and not giant walking talking penises.

It creates pressure for me to try to get you to stop working, or to earn less, maybe by trying to persuade you to stay home with kids or something similar.

You’re now in a situation, where you can keep your job, knowing it will cause lots of mockery and stress towards the person you married, or you can concede to my requests and commit career suicide.

Why the fuck is it always the woman’s problem?

Indeed. Misogyny is defined by actions and words. A man who values his pride, and not being mocked by other men, over his wife’s ability to have a fulfilling and lucrative occupation is acting as a misogynist would. A man who is trying to fight patriarchy would take the opportunity to tell the men who are mocking him that they are being sexist assholes and let it go.

If that were me, I’d get a divorce. But then I’d probably never marry such a person anyway.

The discrimination hurts women more because, most often, the economic independence/advantageous positions are classified as “male territory” or “male roles” and women excluded; that’s a huge disparity. You and I are forbidden from cooking; she’s forbidden from supporting herself.

Yes, there are downsides that affect both genders, but when it comes to the factor of “independence” – which is huge – women are affected more. Men generally made the rules, so men generally benefit more from them (even if both sides lose overall).

@Bronze Dog
Gaahhhh!!!! Other M messed one of the greatest videogame franchise of all freaking time!!! I will never get over that. That relationship with Samus and Malkovich makes Samus look like a codependet. It loods abusive and unhealthy. It was such sexist garbage. I don’t know what the creators were thinking.

Indeed. Misogyny is defined by actions and words. A man who values his pride, and not being mocked by other men, over his wife’s ability to have a fulfilling and lucrative occupation is acting as a misogynist would. A man who is trying to fight patriarchy would take the opportunity to tell the men who are mocking him that they are being sexist assholes and let it go.

If that were me, I’d get a divorce. But then I’d probably never marry such a person anyway.

Reminds me of how on Comics Crumugeon, they mock the Spiderman comic for CONSTANTLY having the “my wife makes more than me” angst with Peter Parker.

This is someone who is married to an actress…and has the powers of a demigod… and the income disparity apparently constantly bugs him. The commentary constantly harps on how this makes Parker look absolutely PATHETIC. Not the disparity of income but actually caring about it.

@zerple
The fact that you consider being mocked by stupid friends of the fact that the wife has a job that much important is indicative of your attitude. You can’t even consider the viewpoint of the woman.

Seriously, the guy could address the issue with his behavior…he could choose to take a lower paying job that has a less hostile environment. He is still at a loss but he might deem it a superior solution. Or he might look for a higher paying job to avoid the issue. Or he could work there, note that co-workers aren’t necessarily your BFF and piss in the coffee pot every morning.

And as usual, we’ve got a dumbass or two who insists that the real problem with patriarchy is that occasionally, there are some constraints on the hobbies men can enjoy without being insulted by being called women (which is of course okay). Yes, PHMT, but compared to earning less, being treated as an incubator, being expected to be decorative at all times? Sorry d00dz, getting called a woman (which of course is an insult) is fucking nothing.

I’m just saying, problems can be caused for individuals by gender roles placed on the opposite gender.

Yes, but you are deliberately erasing the part where the husband CAUSES the problem by accepting and reinforcing, and attempting to enforce the gender roles on his wife. The gender roles aren’t just sitting there. They require complicity and participation. You seem to be blind to the complicity and participation of the man in your scenario. Why is that?

Here is an example of how gender roles placed on men can negatively effect women. Imagine you and I get married. You go on become a successful software developer, you make $70k/yr. I become a construction worker, and I pull $30k/yr. I will be actively mocked by everyone in the world (well, the unenlightened anyway) for making less money than my wife. It creates pressure for me to try to get you to stop working, or to earn less, maybe by trying to persuade you to stay home with kids or something similar.

You’re now in a situation, where you can keep your job, knowing it will cause lots of mockery and stress towards the person you married, or you can concede to my requests and commit career suicide.

My worst-case scenario – not having a job, losing my career, and having to depend on you, which might or might not work out well. If anything happens to you (or if I later choose to leave the relationship), this will really suck for me.

@Strange, Ing & others: Of course the man in my story was complicit in the role being pushed on him. That’s part of the point of the story. People frequently adopt and enforce these things on themselves. If there were no roles, he would not be pressuring them to help him adhere to them.

The problem is not male or female, the problem is obnoxious, unrealistic rigid gender roles which are pervasive throughout society.

Icthyic, Zerple avidly defended the zero-sum premise here and in another thread. That’s true, independent of whether he’s trying to make a point about typing.

I agree, gender stereotypes and rigid roles are very damaging to both men and women. In men you see concrete results as they are less likely to go to the doctor, because that would mean admitting weakness and that’s not “manly.”

But the damage is, as I said, not symmetrical. I am not sure if Zerple is trying to claim that the damage is symmetrical. I do think that his hypothetical scenario is more revealing of his own sexist mindset than anything else.

If I can pimp a video game. Fallout: New Vegas has so far impressed me, the character set is a good mix and gender/sexuality seems to be open and decently done.

I do have to note that from the two factions (New California Republic and Caesar’s Legion) the “good” one seems to be gender non-discriminant (male and female soldiers are mixed and both on the front line and you see a good number of female leaders) while the “bad” one has only men in it’s army.

*I have heard that there is a story line involving rape but I haven’t found it so I can’t comment on it yet.

Dude, you need to learn some econ. Money for all practical purposes is NOT a finite resource–that’s one of the reasons why the gold standard doesn’t work. Productivity can increase–that increases the money supply. Both inflation and deflation affect the money supply and purchasing power.

Seems to me that getting rid of teh stereotype that women must be dependent upon a man means your construction worker ceases to have a problem.

The problem is not male or female, the problem is obnoxious, unrealistic rigid gender roles which are pervasive throughout society.

No, the problem within the relationship is demonstrably related to the man’s behavior. The woman has already done her part to challenge those gender roles by getting an education and a high-paying job. The man is not doing his part to challenge those rigid gender roles.

The only way we’re going to solve the problem of unrealistic, rigid gender roles, is if more and more men like the guy in your scenario turn to their mates and buddies and say, “Knock it off with your sexist assholery. I’m proud of my wife and I really don’t care that she makes more than me. I don’t see why you do, unless you think men should always dominate women. Are you a bunch of sexists?”

The problem is that you, and people who think like you, are blinded to the obvious solution by your privilege and biases.

Now Sally Strange has moved to ad hominem attacks “I do think that his hypothetical scenario is more revealing of his own sexist mindset than anything else”. The last refuge of someone with no legitimate point to make.

Now Sally Strange has moved to ad hominem attacks “I do think that his hypothetical scenario is more revealing of his own sexist mindset than anything else”. The last refuge of someone with no legitimate point to make.

That assessment is well-supported and I’ve already explained why I think it is the case. Therefore, while you may find it insulting, it is not an ad hominem attack.

Do you dispute that you have unconscious sexist biases that may have been revealed by the assumptions you made in your hypothetical scenario? If so, please explain.

That’s the point of my story, that you can be effected by the expectation put on, and the behaviors of, SOMEONE ELSE.

Yeah, except that the “you” in your story was, by your assumption, woman. She, not her husband, is the one who has to deal with the expectations. The expectations were imposed on him, he accepted them and went and imposed them on his wife, because that’s the way things are “supposed” to be.

I might also note that isn’t 70,000 a year close to what they found the cap of monetary induced happiness to be? ie the point at which it doesn’t matter if you have 70,000 or 70,000,000 happiness is more or less equal?

Fuck the guy could possibly quit his job and be a househusband if the problem was that bad. Yeah he’d be mocked for being a house husband but one party gets 50% more time to fish and do manly things like knife fight grizzly bears and the other party is working at EatshitanddieINC. The last laugh and all.

“Do you dispute that you have unconscious sexist biases that may have been revealed by the assumptions you made in your hypothetical scenario? If so, please explain.”

Yes, I constructed the scenario to be sexist to illustrate a point. There is nothing unconscious about it. I could, however argue that your response had an unconscious sexist bias against men, as your response to the hypothetical husband’s emotional pain was something to the effect of “Quit being a wuss and deal with it”. Sound like someone likes her men to conform to the warrior archetype doesn’t it?

All-in-all, the story is just there to point out that all gender roles are a problem for everyone.

I was working on the computer this morning listening to the local radio station and talk about screwed up. I kid you not a commercial from a local church stating that they were starting Machismo classes. Come and learn how to be a real “man”,what it means to be a real man and something about taking care of your family and “the little lady” I almost did a spit take on the computer screen.

“An ad hominem (Latin: “to the man”, “to the person”), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.”

“I do think that his hypothetical scenario is more revealing of his own sexist mindset than anything else”

I kid you not a commercial from a local church stating that they were starting Machismo classes. Come and learn how to be a real “man”,what it means to be a real man and something about taking care of your family and “the little lady”

Standard christian the man is the head of the family, the woman must submit, yada, yada, yada. Religion is a heavy hitter when it comes to upholding and enforcing patriarchal values.

Could we possibly just agree that the standard roles presented as socially acceptable in the United States are at best ridiculous and at worst extraordinarily destructive ? It is pretty silly to argue about who has it worst (“gay” appearing male regardless of actual sexual preference verses ugly smart woman ? What a load of cows bullocks! – that whole scenario means actually buying into these awful stereotypes) when the energy would be better spent trying to change things. (Alright, I know – rose colored glasses anyone ?)

This applies not just to gender roles (why does cooking keep coming up as a limiting role – well I guess women cook and men are “chefs” – look it up – whatever) but to what our society values as a whole. Look at what we pay teachers and how they are generally valued verses how much we pay actors whose political opinions we keep being subjected to for some strange reason. Yes I am well aware that there are poorly paid actors too – but I think you get the gist of my argument.

With respect to raising children, both of mine are being subjected (more and more as they get older) to some of the awful consequences of not conforming to the norm. I hate it! My son likes to read and cook, my daughter also likes to cook and to play in the mud in her princess dress – all of which is normal – but is not respected as such by the larger media norm. This is one of the reasons that the media images that my children are exposed to are as controlled as I can make them. The problem is that unless I want to start making my daughters clothing, I can’t even dress her in the morning without promoting awful messages about what it means to be a girl.

I worry about this stuff too, but I encourage my daughter to play board games that involve some mental activity – like Apples to Apples. That stuff can be pretty hilarious when you get a good crowd together. Likewise, my friends/family and I have taught her some cool stuff about maths and science to go along with other people teaching her about makeup and fashion. She and I both love Legos and build stuff all the time. I encourage her to write and illustrate her own stories as well.

She wants to be both an artist and a MythBuster when she grows up. I don’t think she’ll settle for less, and I’m ridiculously proud of her for having some kickass life goals.

Yes, I constructed the scenario to be sexist to illustrate a point. There is nothing unconscious about it.

So, you deliberately paired a woman with a sexist husband? You knew that the husband’s behavior was sexist, but you didn’t think that was worth highlighting? That was a conscious decision: “Yes, this man COULD be the locus of decision-making here, but even though he’s kind of a better model for illustrating how to deal with the dilemmas imposed on all people by rigid gender roles than the woman is, I’m going to go ahead and make the woman the locus of gender-role-challenging decision-making here anyway.”

Since it was a conscious decision, it should be pretty easy to explain why you made that choice. So let’s hear it.

I could, however argue that your response had an unconscious sexist bias against men, as your response to the hypothetical husband’s emotional pain was something to the effect of “Quit being a wuss and deal with it”. Sound like someone likes her men to conform to the warrior archetype doesn’t it?

I suppose, yes. I am a warrior type myself and I tend to date them. But that doesn’t have anything to do with an alleged anti-male bias. The point is that the man in your scenario was behaving in ways that render him indistinguishable from a misogynist. The woman he’s married to, the woman he claims to love and cherish above all others–he wants her to subordinate her life goals, her career, and her paycheck to his ego. I would not like a person who thought this was an okay, not at all. Not to be friends with, and definitely not to be married with. Not because he has a penis, but because it’s an assholish, sexist move. Whether he chooses to confront his mates about it is his business, but by choosing to confront his wife about it and make his emotional comfort her responsibility, at a HUGE cost to her, is an aggressive, cruel thing to do. Such a person does not deserve and consideration for his emotional pain.

That you think he does is revealing, as I said, of your sexist assumptions and male privilege.

If I can pimp a video game. Fallout: New Vegas has so far impressed me, the character set is a good mix and gender/sexuality seems to be open and decently done.

Game was bugged to hell when I first played it and the plotlines weren’t nearly thought out enough. But, you’re 100% right about the character set, very diverse as far as sexuality and gender go. Just not very deep. Love Veronica and Boone, though.

“An ad hominem (Latin: “to the man”, “to the person”), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.”

“I do think that his hypothetical scenario is more revealing of his own sexist mindset than anything else”

You need to read better if you think this proves your point.

She is concluding from your actions a part of your character rather than judging actions based on a perceived character. Saying someone who says sexist bullshit is probabbly sexist isn’t an ad hom.

(why does cooking keep coming up as a limiting role – well I guess women cook and men are “chefs”

Actually, cooking is far from a limiting role for men. The majority of chefs continue to be men and women chefs still find themselves having to work harder and be better in a professional kitchen. Have a chat with a few women chefs one of these days.

“An ad hominem (Latin: “to the man”, “to the person”), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.”

“I do think that his hypothetical scenario is more revealing of his own sexist mindset than anything else”

Learn to read before you try to call people out.

An ad hominem attack on you, Zerple, would be:

“Zerple is a sexist, therefore his argument is invalid.”

What I am saying is:

“Zerple is making arguments that rely on sexist assumptions. Therefore his arguments are indicative of a sexist mindset.”

Game was bugged to hell when I first played it and the plotlines weren’t nearly thought out enough. But, you’re 100% right about the character set, very diverse as far as sexuality and gender go. Just not very deep. Love Veronica and Boone, though.

Save for bad lag in Gomorrah it seems to be working fine for me. And the hilarious bug of having what was supposed to be a dead prostitute you find actually up and walking around. I could ‘talk’ to the NPC and get the dialogue “THIS WOMAN IS DEAD” as her background dialogue is offering sex. Very wrong but very funny.

I can sympathize with the limited choices given women: oh, you aren’t wearing a bikini on your lithe body with the large breasts? Then you’re an ugly dyke. You aren’t planning a career as a homemaker and mother? You just want to be a man.

<br
It’s not that bad. There have been a lot of gains in the last few decades. There’s more work to be done, absolutely, but it’s getting better! And while there are certainly a few people who still think that way, there are a lot less than there used to be, and they’re increasingly being marginalized. Blatant sexism isn’t as looked down upon as racism is yet, but one day, hopefully, it will be.

In the mean time, there’s work to be done, but let’s not forget the great gains that feminist leaders have made in the past.

I had to keep myself from getting mad at PZ’s last statement, but then I remembered this one time that I had an argument with my ex partner about feminism. He had decided that feminism wasn’t needed and I made a long list of things that still needed to be done. Finally I just said that if women didn’t fight for our rights, no one else was going to do it for us, which he begrudgingly conceeded.

I’ve been in Zerple’s situation, twice. I couldn’t understand when my first husband complained that I was making more money than him why that was a problem, because we HAD MORE FREAKING MONEY!!! Who cares who is making it. How about instead of whining, the man tries to find a better job/friends if it bothers him so much.

. You go on become a successful software developer, you make $70k/yr. I become a construction worker, and I pull $30k/yr. I will be actively mocked by everyone in the world

No, you won’t. My husband and I had a similar situation until recently, and nobody said a fucking word about him. They talked about me, making snide remarks about me being a ball-breaker and a control freak, and how did my poor saint of a husband put up with me.

I apologize for the numerous typos in my next-to-last post. I hope the meaning still comes through.

I still maintain that a man, a husband, who thinks it’s A-OK to pressure his wife to give up her career just to save his ego is being a sexist asshole, and Zerple attempting to chastise me for ignoring this hypothetical asshole’s emotional pain is very revealing of a misogynist mindset on his part.

You need more clever topic lines. This is somehow what most posts except those about Ftb are about. This stupid superficial girl games are part of appeal markets and what parents think their daughters should be. Also judging from my own peers, many girls want that,too. What can you do against that? Have daughters and educate them better. Yours sons,too.
I don’t understand why it made you angry though. It’s the digital extension of female-stereotype barbie. Didn’t you expect something like that exists? There’s much worse on the market: those that appear to be actual education material and foster those stereotypes. This is so overly stereotypical that it is rather comical for a grown up. “Lady Popular”. Can’t wait for the next title “Lady School Drop-out” and “Lady Teenage pregnancy” and or a boys version that shows boys that everything not involving sports and beating up others makes them gay and go to hell.

That is exactly when I meant, though it was a side thought so I did not express it very well – I know perfectly well that cooking is not marginalized for men (mostly) but it was being used over and over as an example for some reason. I don’t need to talk to chefs – I already know several of both genders, which is why this repeated observation surprised me.

So even when boys are teased for not being manly enough, the language implies femininity being inferior to masculinity. So the problem is still mostly sexism towards women. When femininity no longer is considered inferior, then where is the insult?

No way. When a tomboy, or an asprining politician, businesswoman, etc. is teased/mocked for being too masculine, does this somehow imply that men are inferior to women, even though it’s usually the men doing the teasing and mocking? I don’t think so. It’s bucking social norms that affects us all.

(I don’t disagree that woman are considered inferior by a great number of people. I just disagree with your theory here.)

But now you’re taking my point and applying it to a completely different situation to what I was describing. Of course it doesn’t fit. You’re not arguing against my point at all.

You’re also ignoring the fact that when male attributes are assigned to a woman it is usually intended as praise. “She’s got balls” is an excellent example.

There is also another element to insults relating to gender roles, namely referring to a person as homosexual. Many insults directed at males goes along the lines of the man being gay. Insults like the ones in your example goes along the lines of a woman being “accused” of being a dyke.

My point here is that nearly all of these insults are either carried by sexism or homophobia. In my previous point I was focusing on the sexist ones as it was relevant to the post I replied to.

Please, somebody tell me that the video-game description is a Poe
I don’t mind if you’re lying.

I hope my wife and I can instill in our daughter the self confidence to not fall for that bullshit. I hope she learns, and finds the strength, to forge her own way in life. I hope she sticks to things that truly interest her, not what she feels she should be interested in.

By now I think we can form a club: Concerned parents of daughters who have an urge to burn Hello Kitty dolls.

And the MRAs have already showed up, how nice of you to come by. I wouldn’t know what to make for dinner if you hadn’t.

Louis
I think I love you.
Here’s your sammich*

*It was time for the ham anyway. I hope you don’t mind the colour green

All-in-all, the story is just there to point out that all gender roles are a problem for everyone.

Who said they weren’t? No one.

What they’re saying is that the effects are disproportionate.

Can you grasp the difference between:

“Hey dude, we’re laughing at you because you don’t make as much as your wife!”

and

“You have to quit your well-paying job with benefits RITE NAO because I’m getting mocked at work. You will then go on to make less money and have worse career prospects than me because my ego can’t handle the fact that you’re helping to make life better for our family.”

Seriously, you think a guy getting laughed at is worse than a woman having her husband demanding that she quit her really awesome job based solely on the fact that she makes too much money? Especially considering how tough it is to find jobs that pay so well?

@Aquaria: Yea, I’ve heard that too. The problem is still gender roles, just in reverse. For a year, my wife has been a college student and a housewife. People have assumed automatically that I was forcing her to stay home and that I was some sort of patriarchal tyrant.

In reality, we found an economically viable lifestyle that covers both of our needs. In May when she graduates, she’s going to start working as a personal trainer and we’ll adjust how housework works.

The problem there, is again, gender roles, but in reverse. Changing expectations is not a solution. Eliminating expectations is.

People can scream until they’re blue in the face about sexism against women or roles being carved for women, but they won’t go away until roles for men are also gotten rid of, otherwise the fallback role society tries to put women into will be the stuff men aren’t expected to do in their roles.

I couldn’t understand when my first husband complained that I was making more money than him why that was a problem, because we HAD MORE FREAKING MONEY!!! Who cares who is making it.

That’s the thing, right there. No one should care. However, the sexist standard is that the man makes the primary money (which pays the bills, the mortgage, car payment, etc.), while if the little lady works, well, that’s just pin money for groceries and maybe a new dress.

For so many years it was seen as both an insult and a sign that you were lower class or even *gasp* poor, if your wife worked – that you, as a man, were unable to properly carry your weight, meet your responsibilities, ya know, be a man.

That attitude is still so prevalent, the stench of it wafts everywhere. If men, who happen to be with a woman who makes more money, don’t manage to figure out “hey, that’s great, we have money!” and get that message across to other men, nothing is going to change.

Just like men need to tell buddies who think sexist or rape jokes are funny “hey, that’s not funny, what’s wrong with you?” Men with partners who make more money need to tell other men “hey, I think it’s great! Do you know, we have enough to take a vacation to ____ and I can get that truck, and we can get the kids _____” If more men did that, the other men would soon get the idea and shut up.

As horrible as it may be… I do think the problem arises from our biological state.

No matter how hard we try, how much reason we put into it….
instincts will take over.

It’s not a mirror of our cultural values, to be more impressed by a football superstar, or to have half naked women prancing on TV…
it’s a mirror of our visceral instincts.

No matter how much education… most boys, if offered the choice between watching a half naked woman or listening to a conference of an intelligent woman… will choose the half naked woman.

My point is… sex will ALWAYS sell, and it seems to sell a lot better to men then to women. Which has many implications in our society. (women who use this, gain more power vs men etc..)

To solve the issues, I think we’d have to accept it as part of human nature, and figure a way to live with it all while avoiding injustices…
I have no clue as to how that can be done…. other then making all leaders be women.

But until now, we’ve been fighting against this nature… and I don’t think that’s a battle that can be won…

@Ichthyic: I’m getting defensive because I’m under siege by like 5 trolls. Once again, my example was intentionally constructed to show how gender roles hurt people. It was hastily written, and not terribly great, but it gets the job done.

As you’re not trolly, and you and I seem to understand each other pretty well, could you please explain the objections to my story?

As horrible as it may be… I do think the problem arises from our biological state.

No matter how hard we try, how much reason we put into it….
instincts will take over.

It’s not a mirror of our cultural values, to be more impressed by a gymnastics superstar, or to have half naked men prancing on TV…
it’s a mirror of our visceral instincts.

No matter how much education… most girls, if offered the choice between watching a half naked man or listening to a conference of an intelligent man… will choose the half naked man.

My point is… sex will ALWAYS sell, and it seems to sell a lot better to women then to men. Which has many implications in our society. (men who use this, gain more power vs women etc..)

To solve the issues, I think we’d have to accept it as part of human nature, and figure a way to live with it all while avoiding injustices…
I have no clue as to how that can be done…. other then making all leaders be men.

But until now, we’ve been fighting against this nature… and I don’t think that’s a battle that can be won…

You’re also ignoring the fact that when male attributes are assigned to a woman it is usually intended as praise. “She’s got balls” is an excellent example.

To further elaborate on it:
It is also meant that you can’t be both:
A succesful COE (who might be the exactly same asshole idiot totally devoid of human decency as all the other ones) and a woman.
They are also more negatively judged for behaving the way men act. They get approval for the same action that gets her disdain.

As horrible as it may be… I do think the problem arises from our biological state.

No matter how hard we try, how much reason we put into it….
instincts will take over.

To quote Mark Twain “Horseshit!”

It’s not a mirror of our cultural values, to be more impressed by a football superstar, or to have half naked women prancing on TV…
it’s a mirror of our visceral instincts.

Oh Please

No matter how much education… most boys, if offered the choice between watching a half naked woman or listening to a conference of an intelligent woman… will choose the half naked woman.

Saying more about yourself than anyone else, cupcake.

My point is… sex will ALWAYS sell, and it seems to sell a lot better to men then to women. Which has many implications in our society. (women who use this, gain more power vs men etc..)

To solve the issues, I think we’d have to accept it as part of human nature, and figure a way to live with it all while avoiding injustices…
I have no clue as to how that can be done…. other then making all leaders be women.

But until now, we’ve been fighting against this nature… and I don’t think that’s a battle that can be won…

@Ichthyic: I’m getting defensive because I’m under siege by like 5 trolls. Once again, my example was intentionally constructed to show how gender roles hurt people. It was hastily written, and not terribly great, but it gets the job done.

As you’re not trolly, and you and I seem to understand each other pretty well, could you please explain the objections to my story?

From your assholerly apparently anyone who disagrees with you is trolly. I explained it perfectly fine.

@Species8472 I don’t think that people are necessarily implying masculinity is superior in that situation. I remember when I was in high school, there was an overweight cheer-leader with incredibly wide shoulders who went hunting during rifle season. The other cheerleaders called her a dyke and started “taking bets” on whether or not she had a penis for exhibiting masculine characteristics.

That is a variation of homophobia, which is a related issue, and as strong an influence on insult-language as sexism towards women. So sure, not everything is based on sexism, there is homophobia too. However the majority of these kinds of insults are one of those two. The only male-based insult I can come up with is being a “dick” which implies being insensitive. But being insensitive to a degree is expected of men, so it is hardly comparable to many of the counterparts …

I don’t think being called out on gender roles is a product of sexism towards on gender or another, or perceived superiority, so much as a societal expectation to conform to what is understood traditionally to be your dictated role in society.

Well, then we strongly disagree. To me the idea of femininity being inferior underlying these insults is rather obvious. As a guy who has an ambiguous gender identity, I have experienced the idea that feminine traits are supposedly inferior many times. Granted, I find the idea ridiculous and as an adult don’t care, but the intent of the insults and comments are unmistakable.

Once again, my example was intentionally constructed to show how gender roles hurt people. It was hastily written, and not terribly great, but it gets the job done.

Your intention did not match the outcome. I think that’s where the disconnect is coming from.

Your scenario illustrated how gender roles hurt women. The man in your scenario was using his male privilege to avoid the hurt caused by gender roles by passing the pain, and the responsibility for dealing with it, to his wife.

Have humans always been like this? The whole “Women vs. Men” thing? I’ve heard of various cultures where the dynamic was reversed, but never of one where it didn’t exist at all, why haven’t we figured this equality thing out yet?

I think the whole business about male-female wage expectations is a red herring. The article up above was about sexist stereotyping in videogames.

Surely any “What about the men?” argument should be emphasizing that men are harmed by sexist videogames, too. For example, male-themed videogames tell me that if I’ve been hit with a shotgun blast, blown up in an explosion, or just generally been knocked down to 5% of my health, then all I need to do is run next to a first aid kit and I’ll be fully healed of all physical and emotional trauma. Supposedly I’ll be ready to go back to work that very instant. (And by “going back to work”, I mean *getting shot at some more*!) What kind of example does that set for children?

Can somebody (other than me) do something about this? Thanks in advance!

@ibyea
I know you asked me “Which one do you think hurts more?” thinking the asnwer was objvious. I don’t think it is. I think we all could use some consciousness-raising regarding the way society treats its males.

I’m not talking about being teased for being “girly” or making less than one’s wife. Some people seem to think this is the extent of it when it comes to short-changing males. It’s not.

The biggest one of course is that men die younger than women. There’s no reason to think this is genetic. It’s probably societal (stress, diet, behavior). Men get drafted. Men do the dangerous jobs. Men work their children’s childhoods away. And people make jokes about on national TV about a man mutilated by his wife and that’s OK.

We’ve had our consciousnesses raised by the feminist movement, gay-right movement, civil-rights movement, atheist movement. The very idea of a men’s-rights movement is widely scoffed at, especially ’round these parts. People just dismiss it out of hand, as if men have no reason to complaint about their role in society. I think part of the problem is most men don’t even realize how little power they actually have. We think we run the world, but the world runs us.

Have humans always been like this? The whole “Women vs. Men” thing? I’ve heard of various cultures where the dynamic was reversed, but never of one where it didn’t exist at all, why haven’t we figured this equality thing out yet?,

Reversed is wrong. Different is correct. Some cultures have less taboo against gender roles, some have weaker gender roles, some have places of honor for people who don’t fit into gender roles etc. Saying that the western idea of gender roles is a binary that is only “reversed” is incorrect. The nature of biology, and dare we say, instinct probably has assured that all cultures have noticed that there are differences between males and females. I don’t see how that’s relevant to OUR culture.

I couldn’t understand when my first husband complained that I was making more money than him why that was a problem, because we HAD MORE FREAKING MONEY!!! Who cares who is making it.

I make a higher hourly wage than my husband due to my skills and education. Even working part-time, I sometimes bring home more money than he makes working full-time.

He has occasional problems with this, but reminds himself that WE have more money and thus more options with saving and spending. The only reason he still occasionally twitches is because his grandfather drilled it into him that men work and pay the bills, and women stay home to cook, clean, and mind the children. Because that shit is boring and time-consuming and contemptible, and women have to do it because men shouldn’t be forced to deal with it.

Amusingly enough, the grandfather’s second wife had to work because they had so many kids to support…

Once we get beyond the generations who teach this expectation, it’ll be easier on everyone who desires something other than these rigid gender roles.

Male marketed games tend to be pro-active, high energy or story based. In modern gaming a large emphasis has been growing to create the illusion that the player’s character has an active affect on their world.

I videotape depositions for court. I make about the same, or a bit less, than the legal stenographers, who are about 95% women.

Since we (videographers and stenographers) both are self-employed, in quiet times we bitch about the difficulties of self-employment. I can’t tell you the number of stenographers who have told me of being not paid by law firms for weeks, months, and often not at all, of how much work they do has to be simply “written off.” This shocks me every time.

Because I have NEVER not been paid by a law firm. If they’re late, or recalcitrant, I’m johnny-on-the-spot, bugging their Accounts Payables, their assistants, their paralegals, demanding the videos back, telling on them to the lawyers on the other side of the case, and in one large case, initiating a suit in small-claims court.

Where’s the sexism there? I’m a guy, most lawyers are guys, and they EXPECT another guy (i.e. me) to rank them out if they don’t pay up. The result is that I have very, very few payment problems. These same law firms who paid me up immediately will then screw around the stenographer on the same case, holding up her payment BECAUSE THEY EXPECT HER NOT TO MAKE A FUSS. And most of the stenographers — go along with it!!

Aarrgh! Every time this comes up I tell the stenographers how to get their money, and they tell me, “Oh, you’re a guy, they expect that!”, or “Well, I don’t feel comfortable doing it that way.” and so on and on.

I don’t expect to be treated like shit, I demand proper treatment, and I get it. Many (not all) of the stenographers expect to be treated like shit, and go along with it.

Some of these posts should go directly to the “smart and potentially progressive men not getting it” file and promptly forgotten.

I’ve got two daughters, 10 and 14 years old. The best tool I can think to give them is the ability to deconstruct media. We started with Disney’s princesses (which are nearly impossible to avoid) and have gone from there. Teaching them to question why the princess needs to be passive; why skinny and pretty equals good and why not being so is bad; what else could the princess have done, etc. Every piece of media, every walk down the toy aisle, most of the pop songs on the radio have things we need to talk about. It means taking a lot of time and paying a lot of attention, but I think it’s paying off. Neither of them are conformists. So far, they’ve both been able to play with the typically feminine and mix it with the not so feminine (both of them practice martial arts and ride motocross for fun). Neither of them would like the game above, they’d vastly prefer Spore or something like that.

In my own experience, you can still like clothes and wear makeup and wear high heels and not become a walking stereotype. It’s about balance and independence. I don’t like sports but neither do I like frills. I can dance in 3 inch heels and I can shoot and swear like a champ. I don’t need anyone’s approval to do either.

Oh, and the dilemma of the construction guy? As a woman in that sort of situation, my answer would be, “As much as I care about you, you need to get over it or get out.” I recall saying something similar to my first husband. The current one is much more secure.

It was even better than that, Caine. I went to school, studied, and got the job I did because I was tired of waiting for all the “expected” things to happen. I was perfectly willing to let someone take care of me (christian upbringing, I got better) but finally I just gave up and did my own thing. It really hurts that my depression renders me unable to work every few years, because I really loved being able to take care of myself and my family.

It’s a common mistake from ethnocentrism that everyone makes. It comes up in say, homosexuality topics. To say the Greeks have a ‘reversed’ taboo on homosexuality would be incorrect, likewise would it be to suggest that Imperial Chinese views on homosexuality are equivalent to the western religious taboos. In Uganda apparently you have a huge % that is 100% anti-gay they must be killed!….but when you phrase the questions to be about behavior and not “are you gay” you find a much larger % are engaging in homosexuality and not recognizing it. From just my armchair interested observer in anthropology this seems to come up a lot. Cultures don’t recognize their own prejudices or inconsistencies and can’t give an accurate depiction of themselves without large amounts of forethought.

I videotape depositions for court. I make about the same, or a bit less, than the legal stenographers, who are about 95% women.

Since we (videographers and stenographers) both are self-employed, in quiet times we bitch about the difficulties of self-employment. I can’t tell you the number of stenographers who have told me of being not paid by law firms for weeks, months, and often not at all, of how much work they do has to be simply “written off.” This shocks me every time.

Because I have NEVER not been paid by a law firm. If they’re late, or recalcitrant, I’m johnny-on-the-spot, bugging their Accounts Payables, their assistants, their paralegals, demanding the videos back, telling on them to the lawyers on the other side of the case, and in one large case, initiating a suit in small-claims court.

Where’s the sexism there? I’m a guy, most lawyers are guys, and they EXPECT another guy (i.e. me) to rank them out if they don’t pay up. The result is that I have very, very few payment problems. These same law firms who paid me up immediately will then screw around the stenographer on the same case, holding up her payment BECAUSE THEY EXPECT HER NOT TO MAKE A FUSS. And most of the stenographers — go along with it!!

Aarrgh! Every time this comes up I tell the stenographers how to get their money, and they tell me, “Oh, you’re a guy, they expect that!”, or “Well, I don’t feel comfortable doing it that way.” and so on and on.

I don’t expect to be treated like shit, I demand proper treatment, and I get it. Many (not all) of the stenographers expect to be treated like shit, and go along with it.

It pisses me off just to talk about it.

It’s quite amusing that in order to come down against you they had to disrespect a woman enough to think they could take advantage of her.

Are you saying that instincts have absolutely no effect on our society?
Or that women and men in general, have absolutely no difference in their instincts?

Nope, cupcake.
What people here are saying is that
A) We have a hard time believing that there are instincts that explain the horrible scenario of a woman earning more than her husband.
B) Think that humans can really master their instincts with intelligence and reason.
See, for example I’m totally not yelling and screaming at my computer right now.

“As horrible as it may be… I do think the problem arises from our biological state.

No matter how hard we try, how much reason we put into it….
instincts will take over.

It’s not a mirror of our cultural values, to be more impressed by a football superstar, or to have half naked women prancing on TV…
it’s a mirror of our visceral instincts.

No matter how much education… most boys, if offered the choice between watching a half naked woman or listening to a conference of an intelligent woman… will choose the half naked woman.”

Right now I have am experiencing a visceral instinct to roundhouse kick you upside the head so hard…. Not very feminine of me, I’m sure.

This kind of bullshit sells both men and women short. You reduce the male to nothing more than his ‘nads and women to irrelevant except for their tits. The “men can’t help it” trope where they are slaves and victims to their peckers is just not a good enough argument. We feminists expect better from you. Not ask for, mind you, but EXPECT.

I’m a supply teacher and teach a variety of ages of children. Gender-identification is one of the most powerful divisions throughout school. Children differentiate gender very early on and there are differences in the toys children seem to choose. One day I set up a game rolling cars down a long drainpipe. Everyone could play and I encouraged girls to have a go.

But something interesting happened. While girls were interested, and many had a go at this activity, it was the boys who started to dominate and the game became quite boy-heavy to the point that, while I was supervising a little girl asked, “can girls have a go too?” When I looked at the game again through her eyes I saw the game had become more boistrous and even though she was interested in what I would describe as a technological game she felt excluded simply because the game had become dominated by boys.

Please note this was not a game set up for boys. The initial participants were a variety of girls and boys. The girls were, perhaps, less interested and so the remaining girls who may have been more interested suddenly felt unwelcome simply because they were not boys (and maybe not playing the same kind of game as at the beginning– it was more technical and methodical and had become more about speed and how many cars people had).

I know we’ve talked about whether there are genuine gender differences or not here and I’ve always been an advocate that there are intrinsic differences– not in necessarily the toys children choose (although that seems to be part of it) but most often in the way children *play* with those toys. The problem is that there is a lot of crossover: there are girls who want to roll cars down hills in drainpipes (such as myself) but they get defaulted out of the game by the domination of boys and the way some boys play.

In the same way, although I have no anecdote to demonstrate this, I imagine boys get majoritied out of playing certain games: perhaps traditional girl games like ‘house’? Nobody’s telling them that they can’t play, or not providing them with opportunities, it’s simply that they are less likely to play when they are in a minority.

-big push to show Americans that we all have the same rights, or at least should.
-Most Americans finally agree, Civil Rights Act passes.
-recognition that this is a historic problem that goes back hundreds of years and has had severe generation effects.
-realization that something like affirmative action programs needed to address the historic imbalances
-20 years pass
-people forget why we passed affirmative action to begin with
-people conclude the best way to be equal is literally to treat everyone EXACTLY THE SAME, regardless of the past historical imbalances
-affirmative action programs mostly dismantled in the US

-Fail

hell, we haven’t even GOT to affirmative action programs to really deal with sexism yet.

We’ve had our consciousnesses raised by the feminist movement, gay-right movement, civil-rights movement, atheist movement. The very idea of a men’s-rights movement is widely scoffed at, especially ’round these parts. People just dismiss it out of hand, as if men have no reason to complaint about their role in society.

Another terrible scene was where she had a freakout when Ridley showed up, even though she killed him at least three or four times at that point in the game timeline.

I didn’t think so. Ridley is Samus’s arch-nemesis and was directly responsible for the deaths of Samus’s parents — in the manga, Samus was present when Ridley torched her mother. Her reaction to learning that Ridley was alive seemed understandable to me, not some female hysteria thing.

Agree about Adam, though. The subtext of their relationship throughout that whole game was creepily patriarchal.

Seriously? Do you have any idea how much of a physical toll it takes – and how stressful it is – to go through pregnancy and childbirth?

Men get drafted.

You realise men wrote that into law, and determined that it wouldn’t include women because they were girls and everyone knows that girls can’t use guns, right?

Men do the dangerous jobs.

Uh huh. Try being an EMT like my stepsister, and having to wear a flak jacket for work because you attend inner-city calls and get shot at while you’re trying to save lives.

Men work their children’s childhoods away.

As do women. Most families either can’t get by on one income or are single-parent families.

And people make jokes about on national TV about a man mutilated by his wife and that’s OK.

And people see a female presidential candidate on TV and comment on how ugly she is and that we can’t have a president with PMS instead of commenting on the substance of her speeches. We have a rape epidemic in the armed forces and one member of Congress is speaking up for those victims, and Congress and the military refuse to address the issue.

Don’t you think it’d suck more to risk your life for your country, get raped, and then get told to STFU?

But something interesting happened. While girls were interested, and many had a go at this activity, it was the boys who started to dominate and the game became quite boy-heavy to the point that, while I was supervising a little girl asked, “can girls have a go too?” When I looked at the game again through her eyes I saw the game had become more boistrous and even though she was interested in what I would describe as a technological game she felt excluded simply because the game had become dominated by boys.

Please note this was not a game set up for boys. The initial participants were a variety of girls and boys. The girls were, perhaps, less interested and so the remaining girls who may have been more interested suddenly felt unwelcome simply because they were not boys (and maybe not playing the same kind of game as at the beginning– it was more technical and methodical and had become more about speed and how many cars people had). (emphasis mine)

My question is: why, when you saw girls not participating, when a girl ASKED you if girls could also play; why did you assume the girls might be less interested in speed/cars? Why did you assume the girls just felt unwelcome later in the play session, when they were participating equally at the start of the play session?

24fps
Would you mind sharing a bit more?
I’m really interested, because I have two girls and the older one, who is 4 is in the first phase of pink. And it’s simply not because she likes pink that much, it’s because she’S being told she must. Some time ago she told me she mustn’t wear the grey leggins because grey is a boys colour.
I nearly freaked out.

Teshi
And quite often, when you “remove” the boys, the girls will have a go at the totally “ungirly” activities.
I have hardly ever witnessed the girls playing football (soccer) with the boys at my daughter’s kindergarten.
At her birthday-party, there was only one boy who was already old enough to play football and suddenly the girls were all about playing football.

A) We have a hard time believing that there are instincts that explain the horrible scenario of a woman earning more than her husband.
B) Think that humans can really master their instincts with intelligence and reason.

A) I’m not saying that it’s instinctive for a man to feel superior to a woman, or to not accept having a smaller salary than his wife… that would be giving those men an excuse…
Let me be clear… the source of that is stupidity. Most times, stupidity inherited through society.

It’s just that when I look at the situation of our society, I still have the impression that it’s foundations were sculpted through our collective instincts. (men thinking with their penises etc…)

B) I do hope you’re right. But I doubt it.
Capable of knowing when a compulsion is wrong, and ignoring it… sure. But mastering your instincts?…
Maybe the better term would be taming it?… it’s still capable of biting you in the ass though…

And thanks for the reply, and retaining from screaming and yelling at me. :)

Heck, I was kind of hoping this one would come up. One of the reasons those jobs are so dangerous is that macho behavior by men actually increases work injuries. I just posted this elsewhere:

Re the original topic, “Disadvantages of being a man”, here’s one of my favorite articles on a real-world example. On oil rigs, hypermasculine culture contributes to accidents and injuries, but changing to a cooperative workplace culture resulted in, not only improved safety, but increased emotional expression.

Quotes from rig workers: it used to be that the “guy that was in charge was the one who could…out-intimidate the others…intimidation was the name of the game.” “They decided who the driller was by fighting. If the job came open, the one that was left standing was the driller.” But after the change in doing business: “we had to be taught how to be more lovey-dovey and more friendly with each other and to get in touch with the more tender side of each other type of thing. And all of us just laughed at first. It was like, man, this is never going to work, you know? But now you can really tell the difference. Even though we kid around and joke around with each other, there’s no malice in it. We are…kinder, gentler.”

I still have the impression that it’s foundations were sculpted through our collective instincts. (men thinking with their penises etc…)

Oh FFS. No. The patriarchal mode was begun to gain power. It went from there to entitlement and privilege. That foundation has been rocked, but there’s a long way to go. We have learned over the years that womens’ brains work just as well as mens. We’ve learned that women can do the same work as men. And so on. Society changes, cultural mores change. This is *not* about fucking instinct. Get over it.

How could your ever determine what is instinct versus what is due to cultural conditioning?

well, one, you’re probably better of using the term “innate” instead of “instinct”, two, other than things like reflexes (which ARE a type of behavior), there are relatively few human behaviors that can truly be said to be “innate”. In fact, most behaviors (other animals included) are a combination of innate tendencies or predispositions and environmental influences.

as an aside, this was of course how the Nature/Nurture “controversy” was “resolved”… there never really was one.

What’s more, in looking at innate (let’s call it genetic, because that would be the most base root) contributions to behavior, you have to decide at what level you’re going to start including the environment as contributing the resulting phenotypic behavior.

because, even in early development, there are a great many environmental contributors to what will become later behavioral phenotypes.

will you consider varying levels of different endocrine exposures during development? Is behavior at birth really “innate”.

I would say no, it isn’t.

this is why it is actually quite a complex thing when someone says “instinct”, because it has a long history, and involves an awful lot of background knowledge to actually understand beyond basic reflexes, like blinking.

yeah, you can’t just ignore all the history and science involved in human behavior, and claim “nature vs nuture”, it’s just not that fucking simple.

“24fps
Would you mind sharing a bit more?
I’m really interested, because I have two girls and the older one, who is 4 is in the first phase of pink. And it’s simply not because she likes pink that much, it’s because she’S being told she must. Some time ago she told me she mustn’t wear the grey leggins because grey is a boys colour.
I nearly freaked out.”

I probably would have reacted the same way! I have come across similar, but I would act surprised, then ask questions. Who says? What other girls or women do we see wearing grey? Why is that? What do you think? What would happen if the boys started wearing pink? Who else wears pink? Which girls or women don’t? (the last was easy for me, I don’t do pink!) Keep it relaxed and conversational. She might still opt for the pink leggings, but at the very least you’ve introduced the idea that this is a concept to be questioned.

We totally experienced the pink and purple years. I think you’d have to go to great lengths to keep outside culture at bay to avoid it and censoring it just makes it more desireable. Just keep talking, it will fade. We moved on to shades of blue by about 6 years old with my oldest, and now they are both really torqued that everything for girls has to be pink and will choose other colours on principle.

We also tried to introduce alternatives to North American girl-oriented media – have you heard of Hiyao Miyazaki? He’s a Japanese animator who makes wonderful films, most of them revolving around strong, active female characters. Not a pink princess in the bunch! “My Neighbor Totoro” would be really suitable for a 4 year old, others your daughter would grow into.

@Ichthyic – Just took a walk outside. When I came back, I saw your “Take a break” comment, seems we are on the same wavelength. Maybe I’ll see what you are seeing in the story, or maybe I just disagree with the arguments being thrown at me. It’s hard to differentiate rejection from ignorance, so it might take a while to figure out which one it is.

I feel better. Somehow Strange and I rub each other the wrong way, even though we seem to be arguing towards the same (or at least similar) ends.

@Teshi – I played “house” all the time (until I was about 5 and discovered the NES), so I guess I was one of the crossovers. However, the house game, was always strictly ruled by gender roles. My “wife”, a girl named Elisa, would pretend to do housework, and I would pretend to get ready for work.

I hadn’t told Elisa to pretend to wash dishes, and she hadn’t told me to pretend to be getting ready for work. We were both imitating our parents, and we were both the products of “traditional” southern families. Maybe these things are picked up by children from their home life very early?

I’ve spoken to my actual wife before about these “house” games. She wanted to play them too when she was little, but instead of pretending to bake things, her grandmother just taught her how to do it for real. I bring her up, because she was “homeschooled” (Which I swear is always a code-word for, my alcoholic parents don’t want the social worker to see my bruises, it definitely was in her case) and pretty isolated at that age and she still chose the “feminine” roll, in sort of a drive to emulate her grandmother, who was the nicest person in her life.

We’ve had our consciousnesses raised by the feminist movement, gay-right movement, civil-rights movement, atheist movement. The very idea of a men’s-rights movement is widely scoffed at, especially ’round these parts. People just dismiss it out of hand, as if men have no reason to complaint about their role in society. I think part of the problem is most men don’t even realize how little power they actually have. We think we run the world, but the world runs us.

To paraphrase a Norwegian saying: “When it rains on the woman, it drips on the men.”

Sure, men have some disadvantages in society too, especially when it comes to expectations. This is especially the case for gay men and people with gender identity issues. It is also relevant to the nerds vs. the sports buffs case. It is also sad that husbands get mocked for having wives that make good money. But as Sally Strange has pointed out, there is a huge scale-difference here. And as I have mentioned already, much of these issues will evaporate with the equality of women in society. It will knock the ear out of much of the reasons this affect men too.

This whole “will anyone think of the men!!” line of argumentation reminds me of when Rebecca Watson did a talk on a skeptics conference over here last year and talked about female circumcision, and predictably, a guy brought up male circumcision. Sure, male circumcision is an important case too, bit the scale is a bit off to put it mildly.

… and frankly, if I was the guy making 30k and had the wife making 70k I’d be very proud of her. Getting ahead as a woman is a respectable achievement that probably cost her more than it would have cost a man. Especially in the US where things seem to be worse than over here. A difference I suspect has much to do with religion. The Christian attitude towards women is deeply rooted and very sexist. I wrote a blogpost about it a while back when I discovered the “Purity Ball” website.

As I said, I thought that because it had become a male dominated game, the girl felt unwelcome simply because she was a girl. The fact that the game had started to become a little more rowdy I think didn’t help, but that is just conjecture. Clearly she was interested so she didn’t mind it that much.

My point was, trying to be very clear: There are games which more boys or more girls are interested in. These games can become dominated by one gender and thus more that-gender specific as they go (more girly or more boyish), and so slowly the other gender (which may have wanted to play the game) begins to feel unwelcome simply because they are in a mild or extreme minority.

Before you jump on me for the “more girly or more boyish” comment, I do see that sometimes boys and girls will be playing with dinosaurs together and the dinosaurs are going on an adventure, perhaps with a mixture of fighting and drama. Then the game can take a turn: It can become ONLY about fighting and it can become ONLY about drama and suddenly someone is alienated. A remaining boy who doesn’t mind drama is now in the minority and simply ends up feeling like he’s playing the “wrong” game because the boys have gone off to do something else.

This is based on my belief that there are differences in the way that the group of girls averaged and the group of boys averaged– but they do also have signficant overlap.

I guess I’m mostly talking about sexual compulsions, fear, and the seemingly male compulsion to “dominate” in certain species.

but, even with those, there is a huge range of variability, even within our own species.

so, while it might be interesting to determine just how much, relatively speaking, there is a genetic component to any of those behaviors, it’s already obvious that all of them are heavily modifiable by environmental circumstances as well.

even fear:

ever gone into a lions den at the zoo?

hear that big male lion roar right next to you for the first time?

triggers an automatic fear response in most people.

the second time you hear it?

fear greatly diminished by your capacity to REASON that the lions are not an actual threat.

will you consider varying levels of different endocrine exposures during development? Is behavior at birth really “innate”

If behavior=personality, then I will have to disagree.

Children are born with their personalities, and behave according to their personalities.

Example: I have an acquaintance who has twin girls. Their behavior since birth has been very different. One of the girls is very traditional in her behavior and interests, and her twin sister is very tomboyish. (sorry for the term)

I was very saddened to see the tomboyish twin be chastised for being unladylike and we had quite a discussion on what she is really saying to her daughter when she expresses a desire for her to be more ladylike.

I’m a guy, most lawyers are guys, and they EXPECT another guy (i.e. me) to rank them out if they don’t pay up. The result is that I have very, very few payment problems. These same law firms who paid me up immediately will then screw around the stenographer on the same case, holding up her payment BECAUSE THEY EXPECT HER NOT TO MAKE A FUSS. And most of the stenographers — go along with it!!

And why do they go along with it? Partly because of training: little girls are constantly told that it’s not okay to fight, to make a fuss. The same sort of behavior that gets lightly shrugged off when coming from boys.

Also, they correctly perceive that if they behaved the same way you did, they’d be labeled as “bitches” and their contracts would probably dry up.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

@ Zerple

I appreciate that you were trying to illustrate how sexism hurts both men and women. What I hope you can see now is that you didn’t succeed. You ended up illustrating how sexism hurts women, and how sexism enables men to hurt women, even in the context of an intimate, caring relationship. I hope you can see that this is revelatory of certain blind spots of yours, that you seemed to think you were offering an illustration of how sexism hurts men, but really you were showing how sexism enables men to be assholes to women and get away with.

Embroidering on leggins is hell.
We solved the issue with a quick logics 101.
I asked her if mum was a girl?
-Yes
Is this mum’s wardrobe?
-Yes
I tore out half a dozen of grey items (ehm, I don’t have that many, I don’t like grey), so if mum is a girl and mum wears grey, there can’t be a rule against girls wearing grey.
We’ve been actively trying to show her even more that all colours are for all people.
And I can tell you, it’s not that easy getting bright colours for grown men either.
I’ve instructed her uncle and his boyfriend to please wear their pink shirts on Sundays (we’ll get to that clichée later)
Oh, and I’ve finished the “self-rescuing princess” shirt.

Johan Fruh

Capable of knowing when a compulsion is wrong, and ignoring it… sure. But mastering your instincts?…
Maybe the better term would be taming it?… it’s still capable of biting you in the ass though…

Oh come on. Apart from the fact that except for a few things “instincts” are poorly established in humans (really, what is nurture, what is nature?), through history and throughout the world we’ve witnessed the most diverse cultures.
Currently half-nakes size zero with DD-cups are deemed to be the hottest thing and you support that with instincts, but in other times, in other places, completely different styles just got the same reaction.
Hell, there are a lot of cultures out there where naked breasts don’t get any more attention than naked hands, the Americans freak out at the mere thought and in Saudi Arabia the naked hand wil obviously make the men lose control over their instincts.
Short version: bullshit

I hadn’t told Elisa to pretend to wash dishes, and she hadn’t told me to pretend to be getting ready for work. We were both imitating our parents, and we were both the products of “traditional” southern families. Maybe these things are picked up by children from their home life very early?

They really, really, really are. My search-fu is failing me, but there’s evidence that adults treat the same baby differently depending on whether xe’s dressed in boy-clothes or girl-clothes. Toddlers are expected to be more quiet and passive if they’re girls, and more active if they’re boys. Parents, teachers and caretakers often don’t even realize they’re treating small children differently by gender unless it’s videotaped.

I’ve got so many articles in my hoard now that I can’t find half of them, but here’s just one example: First and second-grade children already know that girls aren’t supposed to do math.

By now I think we can form a club: Concerned parents of daughters who have an urge to burn Hello Kitty dolls.

Count me in! Can we have a play group with boys and girls where they are free to play with makeup and trucks if they want? I would fucking love that.

And to whoever mentioned, Twilight, all I can say is FUCK TWILIGHT. Seriously, I was 16-17 when that crap went big and had to read it to defend myself. That is some serious, obvious drivel. I’m glad I read her book The Host first (I liked that one) because I wouldn’t have bothered trying to read it after Twilight.

Sex does sell to women. I like books with sex in it, but damn there are issues with that too. All those sexy ads you see add the sexy that’s supposed to attract women and then it sells it women as “you need this to be beautiful to get a man!”

Ah, the “biological” argument. Because extrapolation from your own experiences in a particular time and place, sans critical examination, to other points in history, in order to justify your conclusions, is totally science, yo.

Good news, everybody: I have discovered that female neanderthals love Hello Kitty. I mean, I love Hello Kitty, so it must be true that all ‘real’ women love Hello Kitty, too.

Well yeah, but why has it been mostly a patriarchal mode?
Why have matriarchal modes to gain power been so rare throughout history?
Why is it so often lion males, male apes, and male reindeers acting like idiots banging their heads together to try and dominate?
And when you raise these lions, apes, and reindeer away from their social structures…. don’t they still develop the same compulsions to bang their heads and show their teeth?

I agree that a hell lot of today’s sexist problems are linked to society and not “instincts”.
But our society’s foundations were built way back when intelligence and reason were still very scarce… and what society deemed “normal” and “acceptable” have been passed on to present times.

I really hate that ever since my niece was born, my brother’s baby mama dresses her in nothing BUT pink, with occasional dashes of pastel yellow and violet. Fuck, she even had her ears pierced–at 2 months old! Teaching an infant who can barely even hold her head up that she has to endure pain in order to look pretty. Even if that’s not what she thinks she’s teaching her, that’s what she’s teaching her. It’s fucked up. I’m disappointed in my brother. But then, this is what happens: my parents tried to raise us without emphasizing gender roles too much. But they also never talked about what they were doing, and why. As a result, the influence of the larger culture seeped in through friends and school and TV and everything else, and my siblings and I all ended up embracing certain aspects of mainstream culture, in contrast to our upbringing, not because we understood it and chose it freely, but because it was just easier. It’s not enough to simply not abide by gender stereotypes as you raise your kid. You also have to educate them as to what gender stereotypes are, and why you’re avoiding them.

I agree that a hell lot of today’s sexist problems are linked to society and not “instincts”.

One of these is easily changeable, the other one isn’t.

So when people emphasize instincts (not easy to change) over culture (easy to change) as explanations, I get suspicious that they’re really interested in throwing up their hands and saying “why bother? It’s impossible anyway.”

Evidence shows that change is clearly possible. Whether people are overcoming innate behaviors or just transforming learned ones. So what’s your deal, Fruh? You interested in change, or are you interested in exploring the reasons why change is hard? Action, or excuses?

Savage-Rumbaugh’s work with bonobo apes, which can understand spoken language and learn tasks by watching, forces the audience to rethink how much of what a species can do is determined by biology — and how much by cultural exposure.

Ichtyic,
I seem to recall a lot of what I learned came out of the Nurture Assumption, but I did read it some years ago and might be inserting things from elsewhere. It certainly impacted how I looked at developing children and the cultures that affect them.

I really hate that ever since my niece was born, my brother’s baby mama dresses her in nothing BUT pink, with occasional dashes of pastel yellow and violet. Fuck, she even had her ears pierced–at 2 months old! Teaching an infant who can barely even hold her head up that she has to endure pain in order to look pretty.

That’s pretty messed up!

I have three nephews and luckily they don’t seem to suffer any such extreme stereotyping though they get their fair share of boy’s toys. But then, they seem to like that anyway. My sister and her husband are quite religious though, and I am worried about those Noah’s ark books they give them. But that’s another issue. I need to buy them some books about dinosaurs for Xmas!

Game-wise, I grew up in the SNES era, and Final Fantasy 4 and 6 (known as 2 and 3 back then) were some of my favorites. 6 especially had a pretty powerful set of women characters, and they essentially drove the story, Terra in the first half and Celes in the second half. Yes, Celes had some real eye-rollers with Locke, but it occurred to me, “here are women who naturally learn magic AND wear heavy armor AND fight to save both the earth and the people they love.” (Terra being able to one-shot the end boss with 2x Atma Weapon, a Genji Glove, and an Offering while in Morph doesn’t hurt either…).

Rydia and Rosa could probably have taken down Zeromus on their own at the end of 4, too. And then there was the Metroid series. Super and Fusion are still two of my favorite games. Point is, I didn’t even think of any feminist message here; these were women, and they were powerful, and they did what they needed to do because it needed to be done.

But these are all, well, older games. I notice that since 1995 or so, “strong female character” seems to mean “male character with boobs.” It’s like someone went “vaginas and emotions are complicated and frightening, i want a woman who’s juuuuust like me but with big knockers, hurr hurr, ’cause I’m not gay.” This is a disturbing trend. Even Samus Aran got utterly Chickified with the Zero Suit model and, especially, Other M. Why is this happening?

In the 1980s, a troop of olive baboons–a subspecies of savanna baboons–in Kenya, Africa was ruled by a number of dominant males who were quite aggressive. Their society was argumentative and truculent, which seems typical from observations of baboon groups. It was assumed that this behavior was genetic and universal among all baboons.

One day, these aggressive males fought with a group of males from another troop over who would be able to forage through a tourist lodge garbage dump. Unfortunately, they ate discarded meat that had been tainted with bovine tuberculosis. Soon afterwards, all those males died.

Females took over

The remaining males were relatively meek and did not participate in the fight and garbage dump raid. They were now in charge of the troop. But they also were overshadowed by the more dominant females in the troop for the true leadership. These females preferred to use affection and mutual grooming to maintain troop unity. The culture of the troop became more relaxed, with a minimal amount of fighting and aggressive actions.

Culture ingrained

Later, when outside males joined the troop, the culture had been so ingrained that the new members were convinced to follow along in this unique behavior or social ethos of the group. In general, there was much less stress in this society than in similar baboon troops where aggressive behavior was the rule.

Summary

Baboon society is typically argumentative, especially when rules by aggressive males. Decimation of the aggressive males in a specific troop of olive baboons in Kenya, allowed dominant females to take over the leadership. They developed a new, relaxed culture that was unique to baboons. This culture became ingrained in the troop, even when new members joined it.

If my daughter isn’t in pink, everybody assumes she’s a boy. Why is that the default assumption?

Not only that, people get angry if you friendlyly correct them that the kid’s a girl (my second one is thankfuly still too young to respond to that bullshit. She also looks horrible in pink)

If I’m in the mood I educate people that historically, pink was the colour of the boys. Red was the men’s colour, the colour of blood, agression, courage, battle.
Pink is “the little red”. Dye was expensive and children’s clothes have a lot of wear and tear, so the boys got the cheaper version.

Blue, on the other hand, was the colour of virtous women. Seriously, how many paintings do you know with the Virgin Mary clad in pink? She wears a blue cloak, so blue for women, light blue for girls.

While we’re on book recommendations, the book I found most mind twisting in terms of considering gender (that has nothing to do with biology) was Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble.”

I’m not in support of some of her positions, but her examination of the constitution of gender in Western theories about sex and gender was pretty interesting.

It’s a bit of a…. watershed moment to realize that gender is socially constituted and that gender is not sex. I was stunned for days after that realization, as I looked at how much was attributed to sex (biology) but was actually gender (sociology.)

Google the phrase and you will discover a wonderful takedown of the series by a woman who’s a lapsed Mormon. Truly awesome.

Yep, I’ve read it. Its been brought up in TET before plus one of my friends at the time was Mormon, got a good look through her eyes then. The one time I allowed myself to be dragged out with her, we went on one of the group outings for single young people in her church. They talked about Twilight. I was so creeped out.

At my first job my manager was Mormon and supervisor was former Mormon converted to Judaism for her husband. Talking with them was very enlightening and entertaining to say the least.

I was calling it obvious due to the “plot”. Like “THAT was the big twist ending? THAT was a big battle? Are you fucking stupid or new to the whole human-girl/vampire-boy theme?” Not to mention that Belle never really got described very well, and the sparkling and UGH

Sorry, its a sore spot for me. I’ve been having to take down this crap all the time. I really have damn near nothing in common with people my age.

As for specific gender experiences as a parent of a young child, my son has curly hair and it’s generally fairly long. Often he will ask for it to be fastened so we have berretts and elastics to do so with. He also frequently wears nail polish on hands and feet and has a baby doll he named Lily. All of his toys are female and he will correct anyone who mistakenly thinks they might be male. But he is a boy and very fierce to correct that as well. I can attest, that at least for this specific example, even traditional female accessories don’t provide him with much opportunity to do so. It’s default boy, girl if you are sure, as near as we can tell.

Species8472: People tend to get a little offput sometimes when I mention it, but there are some really interesting examinations of the social constitution of gender in feminist and sociological theory.

but, even with those, there is a huge range of variability, even within our own species.

I absolutely agree.
I’ve never stated that all men are like *this* due to instincts, and all women are like *this* due to instincts.

There’s a lot of diversity in cultures and individuals. Reason why it’s completely idiotic wanting to put everything in a box or a gender.

But don’t you agree that, through natural selection, certain genetic characteristics tend to be favored, and end up being more present in a select population?
All I’m saying, is that I have the impression that some of these characterstics have creeped their way into society, and dictated what is “normal”.

Caine
OT
Only if I do it by hand.
I hate doing crafts by hand.
Applique doesn’t solve the problem since It would still have to hoop the item.
What works is embroidering on felt and then stitching that onto the item

I generally shop at Target for my kids. My daughter is 11. For both my kids, we only buy undecorated clothes, except for the occasional shirt from woot.com, or a shirt from a fun run or school club. Up til now most of her clothes have come from the boys’ section. The boys’ section has many advantages: their clothes are less expensive, more rugged, and come in a larger variety of colors. She also wears hand-me-downs from her older brother, so she has lots of cargo pants and shorts.

Because I knew they would be sharing clothes, I avoided buying typical “girl” and “boy” colors, mostly. So they have always worn red, yellow, purple, green, etc. I never made a point of saying “no you can’t get that color” but I only ever offered them clothes that I was willing to have them wear, and then they chose from that selection.

When they were younger they were always outside, wrestling, digging, playing in mud and sand, building stuff from scrap wood. So I only ever bought pants and shorts. I find skirts and dresses to be very impractical, and impeding of active play.

Neither of my kids have been hassled for dressing the way they do, and my daughter in particular sees the advantage of wearing tougher, thicker clothes. I’ve asked her if she would rather wear pink or ruffles or whatever, and she doesn’t. I’ve told her that should she want to try out different ways of changing her appearance – hair styles, different kinds of clothes, etc – she’s welcome to talk to me and I’ll see what we can do. So I’m pretty sure she understands that she’s free to be different if she wants, and I expect her to want to begin experimenting sometime in the next few years.

Now at 11, my daughter is developing curves and will soon not be able to wear boys’ pants. It will be a sad day, because almost all of Target’s girl clothes are decorative, sexualized, stupidly designed, etc. We will gradually do more of our shopping at Goodwill, where the selection is better because the clothes are not so faddish.

The last time we went to Payless, while I was looking for sneakers for myself, I let my daughter try on various heels, because she was curious. We talked about why someone might want to wear those shoes. Soon we will have to buy clothes for her band concert, and I will let her choose whether to wear a black dress/skirt or black pants. I will let her decide if she wants dress shoes/heels or not.

I’m sure she’s partly emulating my own style, which is very plain, and she’s partly just used to how I’ve dressed her throughout elementary school. But she’s happy the way she is, and when the time comes that she wants to experiment with fashion I think I’ll be able to trust her judgment, and I know she’ll trust mine.

I’m still not sure why “don’t know” = boy, though. It’s got to be related to the tendency to assume an internet commentor of unspecified gender is male.

As I understand it, the default is to assume ANY people-thing is male. This really annoys me in storytelling where aliens and personified objects are male for no apparent reason. Why the heck is a nonhuman character, whether it’s a toaster, a seagull, a piggy bank, or a giant insect, always identified as a male?

*de-fluffs ten minutes later*

Sorry, all the complicated stuff about normalization of masculinity, privilege and viewpoint got lost in my ragefluffle. A salient point I can make, though, is that most people require SOME gender ID or other for any personlike entity they interact with. It’s more tolerable to assume that baby is a boy than to just not know. *sigh*

(if anyone really wants to get nuts about this, search for Storm the gender free baby.)

It’s a bit of a…. watershed moment to realize that gender is socially constituted and that gender is not sex. I was stunned for days after that realization, as I looked at how much was attributed to sex (biology) but was actually gender (sociology.)

To me the distinction between gender and sex is rather obvious, but that’s because they don’t align properly for me. Still, it is rather confusing, and reading about it makes everything clearer. And I find the topic highly interesting in general.

Species8472: People tend to get a little offput sometimes when I mention it, but there are some really interesting examinations of the social constitution of gender in feminist and sociological theory.

You mean the “eww, sociology” crowd? Yeah. While I’m with the natural science crowd (physics) I find it a bit silly to reject other sciences because their data is more ambiguous or harder to interpret … or less exact as people tend to call it.

A. Single interpretations of sexual selection are not a simple enough mechanism to always be the cause for the existence of something in a population.

B. The question of what is instinct and what is conditioned is one of the more difficult questions in studying society. If you wish to make the probability argument that instinct is likely to have influenced reaction by itself, you need to define what you mean (as you have already been asked to do), which will put you right into the “crap, which one of these is just biology” problem. The answer which seems in my experience to be the one people end up on is that it would be impossible to have a control group (no social influences to confuse the reaction), so the question itself has no absolute (it’s just one of these things) answer. Even measurements of influence are problems using that criteria.

C. Instinct is not a catch-all term for effective; that which seems ‘natural’ to someone is not necessarily the thing they act on, which makes this argument over simplistic from the start. Many people have pointed this out, as well.

D. The use of instinct in that fashion is often used to justify reflexive and uncritical justifications of inequality and prejudice. Is that the crowd you wish to hang out with, ideologically? There’s a theorist at my university who wrote the following with another theorist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Natural_History_of_Rape

They uncritically posited rape as a successful strategy for evolutionary advantage and could not understand what was objectionable about that thesis.

Species8472: It does not line up for me either, but my family beat me until I thought it should have. Even when you have the nagging sense that there’s something wrong, it is still possible (because we’re social) to feel like you might be wrong about that sense.

As I understand it, the default is to assume ANY people-thing is male. This really annoys me in storytelling where aliens and personified objects are male for no apparent reason. Why the heck is a nonhuman character, whether it’s a toaster, a seagull, a piggy bank, or a giant insect, always identified as a male?

Hehe, true …
God is also male, and I recently heard someone say that he most certainly is. A woman would never mess stuff up so badly :)

As an old gamer who’ve played a lot of RPGs, my experience is a bit different. With the arrival of good ol’ World of Warcraft came a lot more female gamers. As usual, a lot of guys play female characters in-game for a multitude of reasons. What is referred to as gender-bending. Now, a lot of the female characters were played by girls or women, which caused a bit of a confusion. Soon sexism spilled into the game as girls obviously are worse at computer games than guys, right? I nearly always play female characters in such games, and never corrected people when they assumed my gender regardless of what they assumed. To me it made no difference, but people assume they guess right when they’re not corrected. It is interesting to observer how people treat you differently when they think you’re a girl than when they thing you’re a guy. Interesting experiment actually. The same happened on the game-forums where I mostly posted with one of my female characters as the avatar. I know several female players who played male characters too, and they had the reverse experience. They suddenly were perceived to be more capable.

@Species8472, I hope you’re becoming a regular, because I do exactly the same thing: presenting no gender at all online and letting everyone assume or not as they will. However, I mostly play male characters (or “other”) and I’m usually assumed male. (And straight male at that. I’m rather proud that I’ve been honorarily accepted into a gay supergroup and a lesbian gamer group at the same time.)

(Also, I THOUGHT your nym looked familiar. Hrr. Regular commentor or no, will you ever call yourself part of the Horde?)

I agree that the way things work now are stupid and limiting, and they cheat everyone. But I find the proposed solution (create—and watch!—the right TV shows, create—and play!—the right video games) a little dispiriting. While media and entertainment might indeed help to shape our perceptions and aspirations, we’re not ONLY consumers.

Way back in 1999 (about a millenium in Internet years), pioneering game designer, researcher cultural anthropologist and author Brenda Laurel* founded a wonderful little company called Purple Moon. The goal was to create empowering games for girls (purple chosen as a deliberately “cool” alternative to pink) – and for boys who wanted more story and less adrenaline and a wider spectrum of emotions beyond flight or fight. She stubbornly insisted on being data-driven, and to design games for how girls were, not how we wish they were – but, with a mission to help them become what they could become.

Purple Moon was (more than) a bit ahead of its time (sort of the story of Brenda’s life), and, for a variety of reasons, the business went under, and was bought by, of all companies, Mattel.

I had the chance opportunity to hear Brenda speak at a conference literally hours after signing away her creation (more like a military surrender ceremony than a happy sale), and she spoke spontaneously and from the heart, about the wonderful online community of preteen fans who had made a true connection to Purple Moon, and the heartbreak of having to tell them the news.

*Full disclosure: I’m in no way objective about Brenda Laurel. I am both a friend and a fan, and consider her one of the unsung heroes of humanist culture in our time. That said, won’t need not be a fan – or even agree with her – to find her talk interesting.

As far as the push back goes, I tend to believe it’s a function of the same thing which tends to cause social pushback: the belief that men and women should have separate spheres, as codified in gender and social expectations, and that women are ‘invading’ those spheres. This invasion justifies intensified attempts to ‘teach’ them to respect the limits and structures associated with their gender.

Video games are a great example (says the gamer who has been at it for the last twenty six years.)

I almost always use this nick online, at least when it’s available. And I read this blog frequently, and comment every now and then.

I have some 3000+ hours played on my 3 main characters in WoW, all female. I played since the beginning in 2005, but have more or less gotten bored with it now. Only played with casual players, never did any hardcore gaming. One needs to have a life too! Still, made a lot of friends in the game, some I have gotten to know in person. People who say these games are anti-social have no idea. Sure, you can hide there as everywhere else, but that is not the default.

You know what I really hate? If my daughter isn’t in pink, everybody assumes she’s a boy. Why is that the default assumption?

@213

Simple, calling a boy a girl is an insult. Calling a girl a boy is a mistake.

Children are born with their personalities, and behave according to their personalities

I really have to object to this. I’m not sure how you define personality, but using myself as an example, I can point to specific and significant changes in my own personality due to outside influence. They were slow, but definitely changes.

As I understand it, the default is to assume ANY people-thing is male. This really annoys me in storytelling where aliens and personified objects are male for no apparent reason. Why the heck is a nonhuman character, whether it’s a toaster, a seagull, a piggy bank, or a giant insect, always identified as a male?

@255
You forgot a few things that are almost always considered female. The big one being cars. Cars are something to be stared at, have posters of, be drooled over and be taken care of. Another example might be guitars. Essentially anything that is desired and must be possessed.

Hmm, yeah, the dynamics of computer games is interesting. I’m well past 30 myself, and have been playing games since the 80s. I always preferred the story-driven adventure games, and to an extent the strategy games. Always hated the shoot ’em ups.

I think World of Warcraft is an interesting game in many ways because it has hit a very broad group of people. It is quite unique so far in gaming history, say what you will about the game itself. They must have done something right. One thing is that they haven’t narrowed their aim in on the stereotypical gamer-guy, while not going in the opposite trap and aiming at stereotypical girls like the game in the blogpost. The game contains elements that attract a wide range of personality types.

I consider Species8472 to be a regular, as they’ve been around for a good while and while xe doesn’t comment with the same compulsiveness as some of us, comments often enough. :)

Actually, the main problem is the time difference between here and the US. Most posts have between 100 and 300 comments when I first read them so I kind of don’t bother to comment :)

I also usually read them from my office at the university where I don’t have the time to follow the comments. This one I caught early on Twitter and I have been home for the last 2 days being a bit sick.

Species8472: WoW is an interesting case study; the original games (before the MMORPG) were strategy driven and, in my experience, played most often by guys. Looking at the way that WoW attracted a wider range of players is interesting. I’ve heard it suggested that video gamers are attractive because they have a clear task/reward system for players which encourages repeated play (as a contrast to the world, which often has a very nebulous and inconsistent reward system.)

If I put on my social scientist hat, I’d probably blame it on a reaction to the need to increasingly diversify task structures and increasingly diffuse reward structures. A quest is considerably simpler at all steps in the path, and you know pretty clearly where it will pay off. I’d also blame the popularity on the increasing access to technology; I grew up with a computer, but most of my peers did not.

You forgot a few things that are almost always considered female. The big one being cars. Cars are something to be stared at, have posters of, be drooled over and be taken care of. Another example might be guitars. Essentially anything that is desired and must be possessed.

That’s sometimes true, but it overlaps with agency. If cars as a category are usually female, what happened to all the characters in Cars? Why are there only a couple of feminine Transformers?

Very true, however, I think what Joe was getting at was how possessions play in to it, with regard to a lot of male thinking. Cars, like women, are viewed as objects of lust, something to be possessed, shown off, accessorized, pampered, etc. The notion of agency doesn’t enter into it at all for many people.

For many men, women are used as a status marker, like cars, with their main importance being adding to the manliness of the man, his worth. It’s that whole alpha business.

Oh, certainly the availability of technology plays a part, but we’re talking about a jump from some 500k+ players to,last time I checked, 12M+. That is a quite significant jump.

But yeah, I think you’re right that the easy rewards attract. The key here, I think, is that there are aspects of the game that appeals to the competitive and to the non-competitive or the cooperative. Your input gives you a constant stream of rewards. Of course what keep people interested is not very different from what keep lab-animals interested in the end :)

@Pteryxx

Never tried real RPing much, but I have tested it recently, it is quite fun actually. Also great that you found help online. I think for many people games are also an escape from reality. The community that develops in games are often underestimated though. On the server I played we had the occasional player die in real life as you’d expect from a population of 20k+ players. There were mourning events arranged in-game on several occasions where people showed up to pay their respect.

One thing I’ve noticed is that many people will go around assuming that a nonhuman animal is male, even when presented with obvious proof to the contrary.

I got a rather rude lesson in this at a trip to the zoo. I was in the monkey house, looking at the baboons. Two baboons were mating. The female had rather large breasts, which were bouncing up and down in a really obvious fashion.

Someone in the crowd of viewers decided to make a comment about gay men and butt sex.

The thing about women on the internet is true as well. A pattern I’ve seen A LOT goes like this:

I’m a man, bushy red beard and all, and I get the pressure to ‘be manly’ and have an opinion on footy and cars and all those things.

So people find it a bit disconcerting when they see a large, bald man with a long beard sitting on the train sewing. It’s nice being large and intimidating enough to be able to do whatever you want, ignoring gender expectations, even if that’s embroidery :)

You’ll note, I’m sure, that never stops anyone else. :D By the way, your nym has always amused me. A very intimidating species, to say the least.

Hehe, a Star Trek reference as you apparently know. I loved those episodes of the otherwise mediocre Voyager series.

For many men, women are used as a status marker, like cars, with their main importance being adding to the manliness of the man, his worth. It’s that whole alpha business.

Quite so. Especially for cars. The link is to beauty, but it is also clearly objectification.

Though I did name my first car after the girl I was in love with at the time. I was 19. But she also liked my car a lot, and I only told her about the name. It wasn’t quite a beautiful sports car either, but she didn’t seem insulted by that :)

There was also a tradition in the army to give your rifle a female name. Something I never understood the point of. There was also a link between that and having to “hit the bitch” as they said. Referring to people fumbling with the loading mechanism that needed some force to operate. I thought that was rather silly and sexist. I just referred to it by it’s serial number: 150272 :D

That’s sometimes true, but it overlaps with agency. If cars as a category are usually female, what happened to all the characters in Cars? Why are there only a couple of feminine Transformers?

I would guess that it’s because they are no longer objects, but people portrayed by anthropomorphized cars. I would still contend that non-personified cars are assumed as female, and the reasoning behind the non-assumption in the examples you provided are for the same reasons I stated that they are assumed in inanimate object cases. Bumblebee is no longer the object of desire, but a hero (which is almost exclusively reserved for males in cinema), so he can’t be female.

Also notice which Cars are male in the movie of that name. It sure wasn’t the workhorse trucks. It was the type of cars that are either “cute” or the desirable cars i.e. Porsche.

I have the impression that you’re not basing your impression on anything. Except perhaps a desire to avoid responsibility.

Avoid responsibility? Just because I’m male and believe that biology has a link to how our society was founded, it doesn’t make me a cheating, mysogenic bastard.

I’m basing my impression on what I’ve seen of western and asian social pressures, and what I’ve seen of many different animal species’ behaviour.
While it’s very difficult, in social animals, to differentiate what is learned and what is innate. Many non-social animals display similar behaviour… in male courtship for example.

Or heck, even my late adorable male dog. Raised away from any father, and seperated from a mother very young. At a certain age, he would suddenly start “trying” to dominate all the males he could cross… especially the big ones. And also try to jump on all the female dogs he could get his paws on.
Put that kind of innate in a social context… and you get the system you see in wolf packs, with alpha males.

While perhaps flawed, or over-simplistic as some called them, my impressions are not to avoid responsibility… I’m a bit offended that you would jump to such conclusions.

And thanks for the article on the baboons. Very interesting, and heart warming.

Everyone is shocked by the couple who decided to raise their child as genderless, but why is this strange? Growing up one of the few times we would see our extended family was at Christmas and looking at the gift giving trends is still somewhat alarming even though my family is forward thinking. My brother got stuff for Christmas like “Build your own Radio” or “Canada Arm” or a radio control helicopters, I got “Paint your own Lamp *Now with fuzzy baubles*” or “Big book of friendship bracelets” or “Cross-stitch set” or “How to Knit”. As a society we make so many assumptions without really noticing.

(Some) people assume all nonhuman animals are male? I’ve found that (some) people assume all dogs are male, and all cats are female. Even after they’ve been corrected about a particular cat, they’ll keep calling him “she.”

In my language (Norwegian) the subject has gender assigned to it, male, female or neutral (he, she, it and all that). “A dog” is “en hund” which is male, a donkey would be neutral, a cat would be female. However all female subjects can be male instead, but not the other way around (what you use depend on dialect mostly). This affect what gender we by default assign to these. “A human” is neutral, while “a person” is male and so on. There is no logic to it that I have discovered. Most people would assign a generic dog as male, and if you use the female form for cat, you’d call it a “she”.

This of course explains nothing for the English language, unless there’s something left over since the languages are closely related.

I think there’s a difference between these and the more specific issues we were discussing earlier like why cars and ships are referred to as women, names and all-

A. I’m not saying it’s always the cause. Just that it can participate to the outcome.

B. I’m not trying to write a thesis here, or even impose my thoughts. I’ve always stated that they were my impressions, and I’m happy to have been confronted with arguments and forced to think further. That was kind of the goal too…. I don’t see the point of posting my thoughts if it isn’t to get arguments in return.

C. Yes I was too vague in my initial argument. I should of put a bit more thought into trying to be clear with what I meant. Though that would probably have not changed their over-simplistic nature. There’s a reason it’s over-simplistic. I’m not an expert in this field (as you would have guessed).

D. I’m not trying to justify anything here. Many people seem to have gotten the impression I was.
I hate all forms of bigotry, and I do not think that ANYTHING can justify treating people differently based on.. anything.
Treat others as you wish to be treated, period.

I didn’t think that this was about who we want to hang out with..
Personally, I love to hang out with people who like to discuss and argue in a calm but passionate and constructive way about anything, no matter how controversial (or how silly).

I’ll stop here, and sorry again for angering some of you.
There are still some posts I find interesting and would of liked to reply, but it’s late and I don’t want to start writing any worse then I’ve done up till now.
Goodnight.

A. I’m not saying it’s always the cause. Just that it can participate to the outcome.

B. I’m not trying to write a thesis here, or even impose my thoughts. I’ve always stated that they were my impressions, and I’m happy to have been confronted with arguments and forced to think further. That was kind of the goal too…. I don’t see the point of posting my thoughts if it isn’t to get arguments in return.

C. Yes I was too vague in my initial argument. I should of put a bit more thought into trying to be clear with what I meant. Though that would probably have not changed their over-simplistic nature. There’s a reason it’s over-simplistic. I’m not an expert in this field (as you would have guessed).

D. I’m not trying to justify anything here. Many people seem to have gotten the impression I was.
I hate all forms of bigotry, and I do not think that ANYTHING can justify treating people differently based on.. anything.
Treat others as you wish to be treated, period.

I didn’t think that this was about who we want to hang out with..
Personally, I love to hang out with people who like to discuss and argue in a calm but passionate and constructive way about anything, no matter how controversial (or how silly).

I’ll stop here, and sorry again for angering some of you.
There are still some posts I find interesting and would of liked to reply, but it’s late and I don’t want to start writing any worse then I’ve done up till now.
Goodnight.

It is easy to have a casual approach to misogyny when it doesn’t affect you. I am also minimally affected by it since I just learned to hide my female side. I have little first-hand experience with it after I became an adult, aside from what I sometimes experience online when presumed to be female. It is astonishing how quickly a disagreement can turn into abuse focusing on gender.

However for half of the population it is something they face regularly in one way or another. It is not hard to see it either if you actually pay attention to what goes on around you and talk to women about these things.

After “elevatorgate” I have discussed that specific topic with female skeptics I know, and this is not such a non-issue that many would have it to be.

Dangerous to draw any sociological conclusions about human nature, group dynamics or social interactions from online multiplayer games (MMO’s). The current generation of offerings are so limited and skewed, they attracte a self-selecting and highly skewed psychographic profile, which tends to override normal demographic preferences.

That hasn’t stopped ludologists from writing theses about the topic, but, as with Freud, a skewed sample leads to skewed conclusions :-)

A. You keep saying instinct must have some role in how our culture is constructed.

If you mean that we have to have highly developed brains, thrive in social groups and develop rules to govern the division of resources, regulate cooperation and competition, etc. then you are simply arguing the existence of our brains.

If you think there is anything “hardwired” beyond this, beyond the *capacity* to develop rules and social groups, then you are waaaaaaay beyond the current state of the science.

The evolution of sociality is complex! It has happened in so many different ways that comparisons to other charismatic megafauna are useless to your argument. You have already been generously handed information on our closest relatives that shows that social dynamics are extremely plastic. This does not support your hypothesis. And then, we can’t even tease out biology from cultural inertia! So I don’t think this particular opinion is worth holding with any conviction.

B. As I see it, you have plenty of perfectly cogent arguments to work with. But it’s Pharyngula, it comes with some… shall we say… spice. That’s one reason I love lurking here.

C. So narrow it down a bit- what, exactly, do you think is being influenced? By what selective force? This will take you deep into the bowels of the behavioral sciences, beware! Here thar be modellers.

D. The arguments you made (or, if you prefer… the impressions you proffered) have been used, time and again, to justify really nasty things. So people get annoyed when they’re repeated ’cause, hey, we don’t know you. All I see is a vague, unexamined opinion being offered up in a context where it can be (and has been) used to justify sexist or otherwise damaging behavior. If you want to distinguish yourself from that, please do! With clearer ideas, or a demonstrated willingness to learn (ie to seek out information yourself and assimilate it). Best of luck.

Of course not. You cannot extrapolate from a gaming population unto the population as a whole. However the gamers are interesting in themselves, and World of Warcraft has a different population than its predecessors. Both in having more females, but also a wider range of males.

What caused this is obviously an interesting question as it has to do with what appeals to a wider group of people, especially females in this case, as more play this game than what’s usual. The game appeal to a lot of girls and adult women without being a silly stereotype of a game as the example PZ had.

The obvious answer I think is that the appeal is to a wider range of personality types rather than having much to do with gender. The game does not restrict you to a gender specific stereotype, you’re free to float wherever you’re comfortable regardless of gender. To play on the stereotypes, you can be a highly competitive girl fighting the best, or run around and pick flowers as a guy if you wish, or vice versa.

The result is that you find a very wide range of people who play the game contrary to the gender stereotypes. A lot more so than people behave in real life. That itself is an interesting result.

Think PZ went a bit over the top this time. What’s the difference between this and Call of Duty or sport games?

I think it is a bit of a non-issue assuming no one is forced to play these games. As long as girls are free to play COD with the guys, which a lot of girls do and love doing, there’s not much of a problem.

If a mother is giving this game to a 12 year old girl and removing any other games from her, you might have a problem.

Then again, not every COD, BF, Soldier of Fortune, SOCOM, MOH wannabe guy wants to go out in the bush and kill people. Usually, the really good players at these games are nerds/geeks, not the tanned guys with 6 packs at the gym or the size 0, “like-totally”, tanned girls at the beach (not that these types of people don’t play the game, they’re just generally not the ones who play it all day and are really good at it).

I’d focus on magazines and TV shows before even beginning to worry about a game like this.

No offence, but it almost seems like PZ is trying a bit too hard, over compensating, with misogyny and inequality among sexes seeing as most of this talk is just that, talk. Of recent, too many posts seem to be focused on it with a lot of them being non-issues or largely irrelevant in the greater scheme of things (not that they aren’t problems) and wont make much difference.

PZ should focus on things he can change. My HumanEvo lecturer posts many links on a FaceBook page for her female students about inequality in the sciences and how other women have become successful in their fields. She actually has a chance of making a difference and PZ should do something similar (posting things about inequality amongst free-thinkers and atheists is a good start), not post about video games.

Citation or STFU, as I believe is the correct response in these parts to subjective nonsense like this.

For you? No. All you’re doing is trolling and exercising the various grudges you’re holding. It’s a shame you were ever let out of the dungeon. Feel free to address your standard assholism elsewhere, Cupcake. I’ve seen and dealt with you on other sexism threads.

The line about who you hang out with was demi-metaphorical. I wished to point out that the line of thought which states that behavior is primarily or significantly formed by instinct is used to justify some abhorrent behavior. The postulates and application of a theory, especially in the case where they are used to justify horrible things, are sometimes worth paying attention to for that reason; the classes of reasons a theory lends itself to can be emblematic of problems in the theory.

When I give an example of how society mistreats men, it is not intended as evidence that society does not mistreat women.

My point is simple. A boy is at a much greater risk than a girl, on average, of, say, dying prematurely (because of behavioral diseases, violent crime, war, suicide, etc.). That this system is imposed on males by other males doesn’t make it “fair,” but only goes to show that men and society in general don’t yet realize that there is a problem.

Citation or STFU, as I believe is the correct response in these parts to subjective nonsense like this.

Sorry fuckwitted cupcaked. Any and everything you say, due to your past trolling (history is biting you in the ass), must be backed up with citations to the peer reviewed scientific literature. Or you shouldn’t even bother posting, as everything you say is considered lies and bullshit. You brought this on yourself. You put up or shut the fuck up…

Here’s the thing about privilege: It cements social orders into rigid structures. People are afraid of losing their privileges–however limited those may be–so they support the privileges even of those oppressing them. It doesn’t work to simply try to dismantle the structure from the top, by changing the balance of power–you’ll be perceived as a threat. Rather, you have to start by seeing your own privileged status, then seeing how it affects others.

Men willingly assume the mantle of “being manly”, even with all its risks and stupidity, because they are afraid of losing their privileged position. Only by refusing the privileges society confers on us can we also refuse the role in supporting the privilege of the most privileged.

You must be pretty ignorant to not see the link between flashy cars and dolled up women and certain men’s need to show off trophies.

So much fail.

1)Using the phrase “dolled up women” is projecting your own prejudices. Why should you care whether a woman is “dolled up” or makeup-free?
2)Why am I the ignorant one for not seeing what YOU perceive to be a “link” between men and using cars/women as statements of virility? You made the “link” (following Caine), so it is up to you to provide the evidence. Evidenceless assertions won’t fly here, Cupcake.

312, Caine:

It’s a shame you were ever let out of the dungeon.

Oh, Caine. The real shame is on you, and specifically the claim you made as quoted in my previous comment. No evidence, just a loud voice: that is all you have and all you are, Cupcake.

316, Nerd:

You brought this on yourself. You put up or shut the fuck up…

Ah, Nerd. What a simple soul you are, you delightful little Cupcake. Do you recall your recent drubbing by…memory block…was it David Marjanovic? or Morales? Apologies…in which they questioned your OM and pointed out that all you are capable of is spewing the same old tired nonsense over and over again? Oh, poor Nerd. An old man who has achieved nothing of note within the field of science, who works the night shift in an HPLC lab, who frequents this site to feel a sense of self worth while just puking up the same, tired old phrases time after time. Nerd: there is absolutely nothing you can say which will make me feel that you are my better.

An old man who has achieved nothing of note within the field of science, who works the night shift in an HPLC lab, who frequents this site to feel a sense of self worth while just puking up the same, tired old phrases time after time. Nerd: there is absolutely nothing you can say which will make me feel that you are my better.

Who’s trying to make a fuckwitted bullshitting troll feel better? I’m showing the lurkers what a fuckwitted loser you are. You have nothing cogent to say, and prove it by posting idiocy, such as the above. You have earned nothing here, and won’t until you decide not to deliberately troll. But then, that requires competency you have never, ever shown, such a providing citations for your inane claims.

I’m going to assume you meant “such as”, not “such a”. To be honest, I have to make these assumptions each time you post your semi-literate comments.

If you read my original comment, you’ll see (with the significant caveat that you are capable of understanding the written word) that I requested a “citation” (one of your favorite words) for a statement made by Caine which was little more than cliched gender-based assumption. So I am not sure what citations you now wish me to provide; I called bullshit on a bullshit claim; it is not my responsibility to cite relevant literature.

If it’s the side quest I’m thinking of, it’s about revenge. Although it’s been a while, so I could be confusing two of them.

Well other than Boone’s back story someone had told me that one of the side villains is a confirmed rapist. I’ve since taken care of him and it didn’t come up in the story but presumably there might be a victim or something out there.

I’m going out in a limb here and assuming that that article is satire. That type of discourse is like 60 years out of fashion. Not that it was ever right to talk that way, but it was normal several decades ago.

Ok PZ…really? Did you not see how fucking stupid it was to unban people like Genetic Splooge?

I’m sorry but I actually find it pretty offensive and insulting and callous to people who had to put up with their sexist garbage the first time around. Because there isn’t nearly enough Sisyphean arguments around feminism, PZ has to recycle old boss characters. Thanks a lot, fucker.

Things have changed. They’ve gotten worse. You aren’t the only person who has been around long enough to know what was going on several decades ago. By the way, a lot depends on how wrapped up in your own privilege you were when viewing things several decades ago. Just sayin’.

Ok PZ…really? Did you not see how fucking stupid it was to unban people like Genetic Splooge?

If you mean me, could you show me where, since the unbanning, I have deserved rebanning? I have tried to post honestly, yet within the rules, initially within each thread. When the usual suspects have abused me, I have come out fighting; I hope that it has always been them who have begun the bullshit this time, as I have decided that they are plenty ignorant enough to hang themselves, without any provocation.

@PaulG
From what I have read of what you said about Nerd of Redhead, your implication was that he was less of a scientist because he takes care of HPLCs. As if it is so much less important. As if those things took care of themselves. As if the only reason to be a scientist is to win a nobel prize. That makes you ignorant. Maybe I shouldn’t have said about chemistry, more like it makes you ignorant about what scientists do.

In 1994, the “allegedly abusive” father and manager of tennis star Mary Pierce, said of his well-publicized desire to reconcile with his daughter, “Mary is like a finely tuned sports car. She is sleek and powerful and she is the best. Well, I built the Ferrari, and now I want the keys back.”…

In American culture, cars are traditionally and iconographically imagined as women, and as Pierce’s potentially frightening comment evokes, women may become cars. Both cars and women, in this reversible metaphorization, have traditionally been considered male property.

…My argument is that the car has sustained and enhanced traditional understandings about women’s roles and abilities in areas both public (the road) and private (the driveway). Specifically, the car has reinforced women’s subordinated status in ways that make the subordination seem ordinary, even logical through two predictable, but subtle mechanisms: by increasing women’s domestic obligations and by sexualizing the woman’s relationship with the car. (Emphasis mine. –S.)…

This study examined whether exposure to TV ads that portray women as sex objects causes increased body dissatisfaction among women and men. Participants were exposed to 15 sexist and 5 nonsexist ads, 20 nonsexist ads, or a no ad control condition. Results revealed that women exposed to sexist ads judged their current body size as larger and revealed a larger discrepancy between their actual and ideal body sizes (preferring a thinner body) than women exposed to the nonsexist or no ad condition. Men exposed to the sexist ads judged their current body size as thinner, revealed a larger discrepancy between their actual and ideal body size (preferring a larger body), and revealed a larger discrepancy between their own ideal body size and their perceptions of others’ male body size preferences (believing that others preferred a larger ideal) than men exposed to the nonsexist or no ad condition. Discussion focuses on the cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral consequences of exposure to gender stereotypic television advertising. (Subscription only… –S.)

Well, there’s not a LOT of scholarship on women and cars, but there is some. Nobody’s done a survey on men’s attitudes about it, as far as I can tell.

PZ didn’t do it to antagonize us, the move to FtB was stressful and not having to duplicate and set up the dungeon was simply a way to ease things and address the million and one complaints the horde had about everything else.

Sigh. Yes I see that. It’s still beyond irritating and while I can’t complain because it’s not MY work load, I still hate the reality of it. I know it wasn’t to antagonize, but I still think it wasn’t the best idea.

If you mean me, could you show me where, since the unbanning, I have deserved rebanning? I have tried to post honestly, yet within the rules, initially within each thread. When the usual suspects have abused me, I have come out fighting; I hope that it has always been them who have begun the bullshit this time, as I have decided that they are plenty ignorant enough to hang themselves, without any provocation.

Are you sure? I mean, I wasn’t even taking part at the time and we all know I’m the trolliest troll around.

Sally:

I really hate that ever since my niece was born, my brother’s baby mama dresses her in nothing BUT pink, with occasional dashes of pastel yellow and violet.

Choice comment from my sister-in-law about her three year old daughter: “I don’t always want to dress her in pink! It’s the color she picks!” I have seen my niece’s wardrobe and the only other available color is lavender.

She was also given her first purse when she was under a year old. It was pink.

Cameron:

No offence, but it almost seems like PZ is trying a bit too hard, over compensating, with misogyny and inequality among sexes seeing as most of this talk is just that, talk.

She actually has a chance of making a difference and PZ should do something similar (posting things about inequality amongst free-thinkers and atheists is a good start), not post about video games.

Well, fuck. Some of us crazy feminists actually care about video games. Some of us crazy feminists actually care about what kind of societal pressures that young women face. But, obviously it’s not important enough to discuss ‘cos you deem it unimportant, huh?

Here’s the rub: If a dude plays CoD and IRL isn’t a violent or physically aggressive person, no one gives a shit. If a girl isn’t interested in shopping or fashion or having a man take care of her OMG, there’s something wrong with her! (Or even worse, she could grow up to be a *gasp!* dyke!)

Here’s how I see the OP: this kind of shit* is a symptom of a truly fucked up society– a society which is actually getting worse when it comes to equality.

*Marketing “boy” games and “girl” games is a problem unto itself, but I’mma leave it alone right now.

Using “data” from advertising, and viewing it through the feminist lens, will not suffice for me, nor any other real scientist.

Well, that’s silly. Data from advertising is still data. And viewing it through a feminist lens shouldn’t be a deal-breaker unless you’re an anti-feminist, which isn’t a rationally defensible position (assuming default stance of humanist values).

Also, citation please about the “real scientists.” Shall we come up with a list of the scientists who’ve cited the articles I linked to above, and determine whether or not they are “real” scientists? Or are they disqualified by the simple act of citing feminist articles? Have we surveyed all “real scientists” to determine their attitude about social science done using advertising data, through a feminist lens?

From what I have read of what you said about Nerd of Redhead, your implication was that he was less of a scientist because he takes care of HPLCs.

Actually, I’m a process chemist. I do use HPLC in my work, but only one of the many hats in my job description. One of my processes is being validated for commercialization at the moment. Not a trivial task. And it is worth quite a bit of money to the place I work for.

I skimmed the Purple Moon article (Good contribution IM) and liked what it said about making games theatrical/narrative ((My SO likes to at times watch me game because my selections are apparently amusing/theatrical enough that they like to follow the plot…incidentally they love Lilly and Veronica from New Vegas)

It’s a big part of making games a form of art. Frankly so much has changed since growing up for me it’s not a bit of a mind fuck to remember back before the concepts of narrative immersion and player driven story were in gaming. My first RPG was Mario RPG and I instantly fell in love with the idea of a game being used to tell a story.

Choice comment from my sister-in-law about her three year old daughter: “I don’t always want to dress her in pink! It’s the color she picks!” I have seen my niece’s wardrobe and the only other available color is lavender.

I wouldn’t care if my niece were picking the clothes out herself. But she’s only 6 months old.

In this article I analyse some of the main semantic and metaphoric representations which underpin the discourse of car advertising in Britain. In particular, I focus on the use of male and female bodies as organizing metaphors which produce a gendered framework for advertising different types of cars. The discussion is based on adverts seen on roadside hoardings in the London area, in magazines, and on television at different periods over the past three years, and I use an analytic framework which is grounded in critical linguistic approaches to texts, situated within the context of current debates in feminist stylistics and critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1989, 1992; Mills, 1995; Stubbs, 1997; Toolan, 1997).

You weren’t unbanned, fuckwit. There was an en masse parole because re-setting up the dungeon was one more thing in a multitude that PZ didn’t have to deal with during the move.

It’s not as though he considered you assholes to be redeemed or anything. As for you whining about what you’ve done? How about when you showed up here as PaulG and pretended to be a newbie so you could be a complete douchebag and asshole to people then exclaim “I’m new! I didn’t know!”? That alone should dump your ass, however, you’ve continued to troll and attempt to work on the grudges you’re holding.

My emphasis (bold text). Thanks for admitting that there is no scientific research concerning Caine’s original assertion.

No, that’s not true. There are no surveys concerning Caine’s original assertion. There is, however, research supporting her position. Is there any research, survey or otherwise, supporting your hypothesis, whatever it is?

What is your hypothesis, anyway? That only a minority of men view women as objects similar to cars?

How do you explain this, then? That is, how do you explain the prevalence of media using women and cars interchangeably as objects of male desire?

It’s just a tiny, but very wealthy minority of men who view women this way?

a) it’s cathartic to be a right bastard to assholes
b) It keeps them talking so they show more of how much of an asshole they are so any question of assholery is in doubt
c) It keeps them talking so they get themselves banned
d) Sometimes it helps

Man sure would be great if all those asshole not-real scientists in the FDA and CDC and all smartened up and quit their jobs. No need for people to do research on mosquito pesticide resistance or toxicity tests or any of the useless research like that! If they cleared out it’d give more room for the big dogs to run…fo shizzle!

Is there any research, survey or otherwise, supporting your hypothesis, whatever it is?

I don’t have one. If you’d read and understood, you would see that all I wanted was for Caine to substantiate her hypothesis. That hasn’t happened; instead, she and others have turned to their usual tactic of demolishing the person, not the argument.

Anyone who gets car or motorcycle magazines (and we get about a metric fucktonne of them) is well aware of the amount of near naked women draped over, seated on or sexily posing next to the cars and motorcycles.

My mind immediately jumped to a Futurama version with a near naked motorcycle draped over seated on or sexily posing next to a woman

That I’d like to see. :D It’s unfortunate, but there are so few women involved in vintage car restoration that there’s little chance that association will change, at least for now. There are a lot of women motorcycle owners/riders, but there are some seriously bad associations with that one.

I don’t have one. If you’d read and understood, you would see that all I wanted was for Caine to substantiate her hypothesis. That hasn’t happened; instead, she and others have turned to their usual tactic of demolishing the person, not the argument.

Pitiful.

Yes, quite. Sorry I was imprecise. Indeed, Caine made the assertion. You made no assertion. Now, however, I am asking you a question. Caine’s assertion was really meant to explain the phenomenon of sexy women constantly being visually associated cars, particularly sports cars.

So do you offer no explanation for the phenomenon of cars marketed using sexy women in bikinis draped over them?

Or do are you maintaining that this phenomenon is a delusion on our parts?

Also, PZ the blog owner approves of vigorous, rough-and-tumble discussion in these comments. Offense can be a weapon.

One of the things I love about having a comments section with a reputation as being a vicious piranha tank is that I can open up this subject and I know there will be a few True Dicks who will make an appearance, but I also know that the people here, the lower-case dicks who get accused of shrillness and discourtesty, will shred the flesh from their bones. And that makes me feel a little better.

– PZ Myers, July 31, 2010.

Organizing atheists is like herding lions, or at least ideally it should be. What we want is a community of fiercely independent, roaring, wrestling, arguing, fighting freethinkers; cross them, and you will get rhetorically mauled, and our battles are not about polite batting about with little kitty paws at issues, but should involve claws and fangs and uncompromising forcefulness. Everyone who is complaining that the harshness of the debate degrades the discourse, get stuffed; I think the call to weaken the vigor of the disagreement is the real degradation here.

– PZ Myers, April 16, 2010

Also,

It really is a shark tank in here, isn’t it? I realise I’ve barely dipped my toe into the shallowest, quietest part of the tank, and that some of the fiercest sharks are still circling elsewhere (I’m a long time lurker, but only very occasional commenter on the SB site). But already I get the same feeling after hitting submit that I used to get after taking a corner a bit too fast on my motorbike, or that I still get taking a really bit throw at aikido: Wow, that was dangerous. But I’m still alive, so lets do it again!

Interesting. That provoked me to go digging in the old archives, and it turns out that it’s true: SlantedScience was using the same IP address as MonkeyGenes aka one lonely sperm aka PaulG aka a lot of other pseudonyms. Now here he is continuing his same old trolling ways.

It’s a standard sized Q-Tip soaked in Ghost chili sauce (401.5 times the hotness of Tabasco sauce) for 20 seconds, and will be inserted in my ass for six full seconds.

What are the health concerns? What are your tips on how to minimize the pain and damage?

Thank you so much. I will update you on the results.

Edit: I acknowledge I should not do it. But if the circumstances were such that I did, how can I make this easier on myself?

Edit 2: Also, what pain killers can you mix with beer?

Edit 3: Listen, I understand the severity and I’m sufficiently terrified it’s going to fuck me up. I understand that I’m a Darwin award candidate for doing this. That’s why I’m asking if reddit can come up with some sort of brilliant preventative measure, apart from (totally) cheating or backing out, to protect myself, lessen the pain/damage and help me not get totally fucked up. Work with me here.

So far we’ve got vaseline and condoms, both decent proposals. Vaseline is a go. In addition to those, does anyone have an idea?

Edit 4: oviousTroll has determined ‘The wassworth constant: for every bet lost and askreddit question answered, a video is posted of a man swabbing his anus with ghost chili sauce.’

Edit 5: What I’m getting from the comments is that it’s the sensation of burning, and not real damage happening. If there’s a chance of serious health problems, I won’t do it. If it’s not permanently scarring to my health and it’s just the pain, albeit, worse than I can even comprehend, I’m morally obligated to do it.

Edit 6: Does no one on reddit have any honor? Yes, I’ll hate the world for a few days, I might have to go the ER to get checked out, it’ll suck like nothing else has ever sucked. Trust me, I’m scared to do it, I’m not underestimating it. That’s why it’s a bet. Enough of this ‘Your friends aren’t your real friends if they make you do this’ bullshit. I’ll be praised by my friends, it will be hilarious in retrospect, many-a-beers will be bought and toasted in my name, and many-a-tales will be told about my excruciating suffering. A bet’s a bet, fuckers. Man up. Now I’m going to go watch Community.

@Caine, Ing, my new motorcycle is nearly naked :) Oddly, I’ve started using “she” for the Bonnie, although I never did before with the Kwaka, the Honda or even the Suzis. But now you’ve got me feeling all weird about it. Hmm.

My 4 year old daughter’s favorite colour is black. She’s remarkably egalitarian with most of her opinions. If you ask which is her favourite Octonaut for instance, she’ll answer “All of them.” But on the colour thing it’s always black and she’s stuck to that for over a year now. We’ve made sure that she has a range of colours in her closet and let her pick outfits when she can be bothered. She doesn’t usually end up looking like a wee goth though, it’s enough for her if some detail or one piece is black.

I’m really interested to see what happens next year when she starts 3 day a week kinder. Will the princess culture that I see in the other girls her age start to come through? I’ve been priming her to fight it by always making the princess in our games together the one who does the rescuing. We’ll see.

My partner is one of identical twins. While the social pressures to “be alike” can be quite strong, you also can get family histories in which they are labelled as “the smart one” and “the sociable one” – and this is reinforced, so that tiny differences are magnified as they grow up. (FWIW I think my bloke is both smart AND sociable, and his twin is neither, but I’m probably biased.)

The claims about how small a thing this specific instance of sexism is – and so petty, not worth discussing, get over it – reminded me of a bell hooks essay. Are people here familiar with her birdcage metaphor? If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. And it’s such a tiny thin wire, you could easily walk or fly around it. What are you making such a fuss about?

Caine: Oh I know. I’ve never seen a woman who didn’t look good in a properly fitted, simple black dress regardless of age, body shape, skin tone or hair colour. That’s the power of a truly neutral colour methinks.

Alethea: Thanks for that, that birdcage metaphor is brilliant, going to go look up the original essay. Also, the notion of personality traits coming in part from feedback loops driven by confirmation bias is really interesting. I can see such a mechanism being the driver behind all sorts of behaviours, both good and bad. It could be another argument as to why starting with a base assumption that all people are tainted at birth (Original sin) is such a bad idea.

As a physician-scientist (MD/PhD) I think I’m qualified to make some educated comments with regards to the statement about male mortality in Western nations. Stress, diet and behavioral factors are major contributors to the lifespan discrepancy. Consider the higher level of risky behavior seen in young males (and even some older ones), the higher rates of heart disease, certain cancers, etc. As mentioned above though, women are catching up (unfortunately) to men in many of these areas. In fact, last year, more women were killed by heart disease than by breast cancer (in fact, breast cancer fatalities are quite uncommon nowadays) Stress is less of a factor, given the relative paucity of male-exclusive or preponderant stressors in modern life. The assertion that men “do the dangerous jobs” is true to an extent. That is, women are grossly underrepresented in occupations with high on-the-job injury and fatality levels, the examples given above are, to a great extent, the exception rather than the rule. Women are catching up though. (See the most recent OSHA occupational hazard statistics for more information) Is the life expectancy discrepancy an issue of concern for society? Yes. Does is nullify common decencyist (my collective term for humanism, humanitarianism, feminism, civil rights activism, etc.) arguments? No. (By the way, a similar life expectancy gap is seen for African-American males and Caucasian males, though not for African-American females, and Caucasian females.)

You’re talking about twins when they are born. But they’ve had 9 months (well, less, I suppose, but still) of interacting with each other and with their environment (their mother). So their genetics are identical, but their experiences in the womb are not. So you can’t necessarily point to genetics as 100% of the explanation for perceived differences in their personalities, even right after birth. Heck, just the difference between being born first and second has got to make an imprint on a baby’s personality.

Isn’t the theory that base personality is formed from 0 to 5 years? Whatever personality I had or was forming was completely shattered when the rapes started at 3; I’ve opined before that there are times I wish I knew who I would have been. I’m very aware of having to build a personality for myself over the years.

I’d say more about that, except it really isn’t something I’m overly comfortable discussing and if I start, it will probably turn into a massive essay.

Caine: The development of personality has been one of the most hotly debated topic in psychology for the last century. We do know that a significant portion of our personality is biological (whether from genetic or epigenetic factors), and this portion is acted on by our environment from the moment we are born to shape the personality of the new individual. The concept of “base personality” is a rather anachronistic one, with most developmental psychologists preferring to state that the most formative years in terms of the molding of personality are typically 1 (some say 2) to 10 (some will even go as far as the end of puberty). Not sure how or if this helps.

I see them as separate things. Behaviors are things that you do. Your personality determines your behaviors.

Does that make more sense?

I’m not saying that environment and life experiences do not also have an effect on personality. I am saying that in my experience, all babies including identical twins are born with a distinct personality.

Sally

I guess I wasn’t clear. I agree that genetics cannot be the only factor that determines personality. Up thread differences in placental or umbilical cord efficiency were stated as factors that could contribute to the difference. I suppose the twins interaction with each other could also be a determining factor.

Even though they are genetically identical, I think that there are also probably slight differences in their central nervous systems which would also account for their differing reactions.

Caine

urrg. bastards!! As far as I can tell, you came out pretty damn awesome despite all the shit life has handed you.

I didn’t insult you, why do you feel the need to insult me? You’re debating like a creationist, should a free-thinker/atheist/rational person resort to ad hominem arguments? Sure, I swore in my reply, but I didn’t swear to offend anyone.

I didn’t intend for people not to be offended just because I told them not to, it is a mere expression to help put the point across you’re not saying anything with malice or to intentional offend for shits and giggles.

“Well, fuck. Some of us crazy feminists actually care about video games. Some of us crazy feminists actually care about what kind of societal pressures that young women face. But, obviously it’s not important enough to discuss ‘cos you deem it unimportant, huh?” Why are you adding crazy feminists? You’re making it seem as that is how I described you or portray you. Stop resorting to bad arguments. I already said I am worried about pressures that young women face, I just voiced my OPINION (we have relative freedom of expression here, right?) that blogging about this game makes it a non-issue. For this particular post, PZ is merely standing back and saying “hey look, I see misogyny” or “hey, social pressures forced over here!”. We’re all aware of games like these and if not, social pressures both girls and boys face at a young age. PZ has a unique position where he can help with problems feminists face, such as inequality in science or atheism. PZ should focus his ‘powers’ on doing what he can to help in those areas, not just point out inequality across the board, hell I can do that in my own blog, doesn’t help anyone does it? I am aware PZ does do a lot in terms of inequality amongst us free thinkers and I appreciate what he does, it is just my opinion that he should focus his efforts away from this (video games) kinda stuff.

“Here’s the rub: If a dude plays CoD and IRL isn’t a violent or physically aggressive person, no one gives a shit. If a girl isn’t interested in shopping or fashion or having a man take care of her OMG, there’s something wrong with her! (Or even worse, she could grow up to be a *gasp!* dyke!)”

Well that is your opinion, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I actually know what goes on in a group of teenage girls, I wasn’t born a girl so it wouldn’t be fair for me to guess about their social pressures. Maybe things are different in NZ, but for starters, we had more than a few lesbians at my highschool and sure people talk about it off-hand and mention it to a friend but no more than when “suzy kissed harry”. It’s gossip, not misogyny. They don’t get hassled in class.

Guys, like social pressures for girls, do get shit (mostly sarcastic shit) if they’re not growing up to be a “man”. Even if you’re not a guy, I’m sure you would be aware of that. A guy couldn’t buy a hair straightener (or any other girl-ish item) without his friends calling him a fa**ot.

“Here’s how I see the OP: this kind of shit* is a symptom of a truly fucked up society– a society which is actually getting worse when it comes to equality.”

I think PZ shouldn’t waste his efforts pointing out social pressures (that both girls and boys face, whether you like it or not) when he has the potential to do so much more and that makes me the bad guy? This is the problem with you type (I don’t want to say feminist or similar as that would exclude me and make me out as a misogynist, which I am not) on this forum, someone doesn’t agree with what PZ is saying and they’re labelled a sexist. Happens every single time. How am I being sexist? How am I what is wrong with society? I am offering my opinion on ways in which PZ could be helping inequality.

I think anyone can look at my argument and deem it more valid than yours on the basis that I don’t resort to insulting language. A real problem on this forum is not being able to disagree with PZ without being labelled a sexist or misogynist. I disagree with his tactics, not his motives. Every time I disagree, the first thing you guys do is resort to insults after insults. Try an argument or rational discussion for once.

If a guy is asking “so why is this (a particular word or action) deemed as sexist amongst feminists (or most girls)?” and you reply with “why do you think you douche weasel?”, you’re not going to start winning over anyone. Try explain things rationally and carefully, get your point across and you may have to be nice (to get rid of the stereotypic image of a feminist) so the guy actually listens to you and takes in what you say and maybe even understand and agrees with you.

One thing I’ve noticed is that many people will go around assuming that a nonhuman animal is male, even when presented with obvious proof to the contrary.

I find it interesting how native speakers of English apply this, because in German, this is largely determined by the grammatical gender. Although most animals are male… Yet, there are usually the female forms out there as well.
But with humans, the default is the male word (and the MRAs get their knickers in a twist because you’re now supposed to use both forms and adress the dear princesses and princes)

Cameron
You’re an idiot.
If you’d bothered to read the comments you’d have seen that the video game is one drop in a gigantic sea. You’d have seen the multiple complaints of parents who see their children, especially the daughters bullied into such roles.
But you didn’t bother.
So, take the short way out and don’t forget your porcupine.

arids

Men willingly assume the mantle of “being manly”, even with all its risks and stupidity, because they are afraid of losing their privileged position.

QFFT
I don’t think so many young guys die in car crahes because they’re bad at driving. They’re dying of an overdose of toxic masculinity, in which a fast car is a penis enhancer, where they need to show by driving too fast, too risky, too drunk, that they’re “the man”

Paul G
Ahhh, I see you’re one of those “scientists” who think that the people who do some regular work in his ivory tower, those who build and make the applicances he works with, or just clean the toilets are lesser people.
Yeah, fuck off.

So now a figure of speech and TV shows/adverts are considered science?

They’re called “data”, fuckwit. Analyzing them is science. You know, what sociology and linguistics and all those fine disciplines do.

Fossil Fishy

I’m really interested to see what happens next year when she starts 3 day a week kinder. Will the princess culture that I see in the other girls her age start to come through?

Yes.
Sadly.
It so happened with my daughter.
At home she can’t be bothered much with princesses, but kindergarten, pink is the only existing colour.
She also keeps telling me that she mustn’t get dirty (usually when you can see what was for lunch on her shirt and when there’s more sand on her than in the box)

@Cameron: Y’know, there’s OTHER POSTS on this very blog that aren’t even about those darned girls. They’re in Recent Posts in the sidebar. Why don’t you go over there instead of interrupting a perfectly good conversation or three in which you have no interest?

I know you asked Audley, but Imma go ahead and answer your question because I got my ass handed to me for asking a similar question at one point on this blog.

PZ is not only an Athiest and a Freethinker, he is also a Feminist. So he posts about feminism, and as a feminist that video game pisses him off.

Every single ever-loving time he posts about feminism, someone has to comment about how that particular example is not even worthy of notice, a complete waste of time, what about the menz! (or muslima in a notable recent shitstorm)

It’s nothing but a silencing technique. Don’t do it!! You are not the blog owner, and it isn’t apparent from your post that you know the first thing about feminism.

Now add something substantive to the discussion of harmful gender stereotypes being perpetuated by media or shut up and listen.
You do not get to decide the topic is not worthy of discussion.

It’s a quick piece describing (and linking to a more detailed takedown) of one of the many ways women are conditioned to fit into certain gender norms and stereotypes. It’s also a really glaring example of it. There’s nothing wrong with pointing it out and discussing it and (as many posters were doing) trying to fit it into the larger context of sexism in soceity.

You might feel time and effort is better spent elsewhere but that doesn’t make this a waste of time. Some of us who’re discussing having children with our spouse find these conversations and shared experiences from parents (and women who dealt with these situations as children)very helpful. It gives us an idea of what to expect.

Caine: I sometimes wonder the same thing. How much further would I be if I didn’t have to compensate for some of this? Where would I be if I didn’t have these reactions I have to pause and think my way past (if possible; sometimes the only thing to do is hide them until I can be safe enough [alone] to curl up and finish freaking out), if I could think more clearly and spent less energy resisting certain patterns?

I try not to think about it. I get overwhelmingly bitter; I wanted for so long to be like the other people. This shit has its own gravity.

I think PZ shouldn’t waste his efforts pointing out social pressures (that both girls and boys face, whether you like it or not) when he has the potential to do so much more and that makes me the bad guy?

Yeah, why waste time on the woes of women (and gender non-conforming men), if he can care about more important things such as you.
Fuck off.

Thetys
Newspaper science knowledge alert (meaning I only remember about this from normal media):
To my knowledge, hormones play a big role, too, especially in the womb. One current hypothesis about male homosexuality (female homosexuality doesn’t seem worth investgating) is that, since statistically the likelyhood of being gay increases with the number of male pregnancies the mother had before, her imune-reaction to a male pregnancy becomes stronger and stronger, thus producing more female hormones that work on the fetus.
With identical twins, one can get more hormones than the other.

“Different from birth”
Something I’ve noticed is that often parents who have two kids where one is a girl and one is a boy will automatically claim that the differences they notice in their kids are due to their sex.
“But of course there are his sister’s dolls, but he doesn’t like playing with them, so it must be natural”.
Apart from the fact that, of course, the dolls are his sister’s and therefore clearly not for him, they never even bother thinking about the fact that they will have treated him differently, clothed him differently, given him different toys form the day he was born.
OH, and btw, my kids are very different, too, but they’re both girls, what’s their excuse?

Reading these messages, it seems that most of the women here are willing to have men solve all their gender identity problems for them. This is just sad. And very disapointing, and somewhat condescending to the female sex.

What you are saying is that women don’t have the internal strength to say “no”. To say: “No, I will not wear that high-heel shoe and that stupid push-up bra and make-up”. There are plenty of men out there who consciously break the social rules of “manliness”, and are willing to suffer the social consequences. They form their own circle of “un-manly” friends, and live happy lives, without constantly complaining about how the dominant culture makes them feel like wimps.

So you have a choice. You can continue to blame society for your feeling of social incongruity while living a lie, or you can just start saying: “No, I won’t do it”.

Start living an authentic life. You will be happy. Don’t care what other people think, they are not your problem. What society thinks of you is generally none of your business. So don’t give it any undue weight.

Think of that woman in Saudi Arabia who recently decided she was going to drive a car. And damn it, she did.

mercurial: You don’t read much, do you? Or is this a case of seeing only what you want to see?

I’m going to guess both. Feel free to read the comments, the research studies and the rest of the material. Assuming you aren’t being a stupendous troll, you’ll have cause to realize you said something incredibly stupid.

Caine: I sometimes wonder the same thing. How much further would I be if I didn’t have to compensate for some of this? Where would I be if I didn’t have these reactions I have to pause and think my way past (if possible; sometimes the only thing to do is hide them until I can be safe enough [alone] to curl up and finish freaking out), if I could think more clearly and spent less energy resisting certain patterns?

I try not to think about it. I get overwhelmingly bitter; I wanted for so long to be like the other people. This shit has its own gravity.

Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I had many periods of overwhelming bitterness. That was one thing I was able to leave behind, eventually, but it took one hell of a long time, decades. There are times, when I think of A (mother) I get flashes of deep bitterness, but they are there and gone again these days.

I remember all the people I ‘borrowed’ a personality from, or this trait or that trait. I remember shedding traits and picking up new ones all the time. I remember realizing I had no laugh. For so fucking long, I was more of a chameleon than any sort of a person. It’s a frightening, desolate, anchor-less way to be.

There are so very many of us puzzle people, the ones who have to look at a million shards with bits pulverized to dust and find a way to fit a person together. I think all of us who had the strength to get through the unrelenting horror of it, year after year after year, I think we not only deserve to be treated well, we sure as hell should treat ourselves well. So many of us never make it through. Fuck, we should be walking around with medals. Chocolate ones, of course.

Here’s a question to all you single women out there: What would happen if you leave your house one day without make-up on? I’m serious. What is the worst that could happen??

I will tell you the worst thing that can happen. You meet a stranger in a store, but he/she’s too shallow to be romantically interesated in you without your make-up on. That’s it.

At the heart of it, this is what you guys are basically afraid of. In this example specifically, the possibility of losing a shallow future husband/partner. In general, the possibility of letting other people see you in your authentic light. This is what scares you.

Screw it, I’m so pissed I’m going to feed the troll and then go take a walk.

Firstly,

Reading these messages, it seems that most of the women here are willing to have men solve all their gender identity problems for them. This is just sad. And very disapointing, and somewhat condescending to the female sex.

Dumbshit, no where was that said or implied. I wonder about your word choice of “female sex” as well.

Secondly,

What you are saying is that women don’t have the internal strength to say “no”. To say: “No, I will not wear that high-heel shoe and that stupid push-up bra and make-up”. There are plenty of men out there who consciously break the social rules of “manliness”, and are willing to suffer the social consequences. They form their own circle of “un-manly” friends, and live happy lives, without constantly complaining about how the dominant culture makes them feel like wimps.

No where has that been said. There are plenty of women who have discussed bucking the trend in society in this thread and others here. There are also plenty of women who enjoy things society approves of and they should be free to make their choice. I do not approve of this attitude “no women should wear make-up b/c it enforces patriarchy.” That hurts women too, asshole. Women are people who should make their own decisions and pursue their own interests. They can still be an ally and a feminist.

Also, sometimes we just can’t afford to suffer the social consequences. I’m a single mother, social consequences have a huge impact for working, school and raising my child. I still do what I can but I can’t run around talking about feminism with a giant sign and shit. That doesn’t lessen who I am, what I stand for or my contribution to society.

We do have happy lives and we don’t “constantly complain.” This is a community of people banded together and sharing our experiences helps us and the lurkers. Its a healing thing to discuss issues, like a support group and plus it helps the lurkers education too.

And I’m sure friends talk about things they go through, or at least knowing there are others like them help deal with this shit, just like this place for many people. File it under PHMT. I stand with men who are feminist, where or not they are non-conforming because you can like and want to be “manly” in a lot of ways society approves us and still be a feminist.

“Constantly complain” is on my bingo card under “Hysterical womenz.”

So you have a choice. You can continue to blame society for your feeling of social incongruity while living a lie, or you can just start saying: “No, I won’t do it”.

Start living an authentic life. You will be happy. Don’t care what other people think, they are not your problem. What society thinks of you is generally none of your business. So don’t give it any undue weight.

That is easier said than done and like I said some women are living an authentic life while liking things society approves of
The problem is the chilly climates, the pressure to do shit. How do we remove that? Well, talking about it and raising awareness for one really fucking helps, which is what we are doing.

Think of that woman in Saudi Arabia who recently decided she was going to drive a car. And damn it, she did.

This smacks of “this is little shit, get over it! Think of women who are in the middle east!”

Why is it that with sexism, women are told to fix it themselves, while we have other discrimination issues and minorities aren’t told the same thing?

Strive to be that woman, if you feel as strongly about freedom.

All of us, men and women, should strive to be better people and less sexist. We should band together to fight the patriarchy and say, this shit isn’t right. We should strive to be whatever we want to be, whether or not society approves. We should have a choice and not be pressured into shit, like not wearing make-up and being called “fake” if you wear it because you like it. That is not helping. YOU are not helping.

tl;dr version = You aren’t helping. You are putting unneeded pressure on women if they do what they like, just like society, only you have different values. And I seriously doubt your sincerity.

It is a stupendous troll, one who will work like hell to derail a thread. It’s mercurial muse, a very well known troll, who infested sciblogs way too much.

Awwww shit. I only saw their post and mine before I posted the last comment. Now I really wish I hadn’t commented again. Damn it. I should have recognized the name. I can’t keep all these damn people straight. I will resist the urge to comment on their other posts.

I remember all the people I ‘borrowed’ a personality from, or this trait or that trait. I remember shedding traits and picking up new ones all the time. I remember realizing I had no laugh. For so fucking long, I was more of a chameleon than any sort of a person. It’s a frightening, desolate, anchor-less way to be.

There are so very many of us puzzle people, the ones who have to look at a million shards with bits pulverized to dust and find a way to fit a person together.

This is so, so very true. Once again, thanks for articulating what I’ve been grappling with for years.

I once tried describing it to my therapist as being like a shattered vase, built up again from different pieces I either made up or imitated and literally holding these pieces of self together through sheer force of will (and stubbornness, most of the time ;) ). It’s fucking exhausting.

Once again, thanks for articulating what I’ve been grappling with for years.

It’s supremely difficult to describe, I struggled to write the little I did. I’ve found it’s close to impossible to effectively get across what it’s like, at least to those who haven’t been through it. When you’re talking to someone else who has, you don’t need to try and you don’t need to say much at all. They know.

It’s fucking exhausting.

And that’s an understatement.

J_A_L:

Fucking A.

Don’t sweat it. Your response was good, and you never know if it might clarify or help someone reading. It’s all good.

I remember all the people I ‘borrowed’ a personality from, or this trait or that trait. I remember shedding traits and picking up new ones all the time. I remember realizing I had no laugh. For so fucking long, I was more of a chameleon than any sort of a person. It’s a frightening, desolate, anchor-less way to be.

There are so very many of us puzzle people, the ones who have to look at a million shards with bits pulverized to dust and find a way to fit a person together.

I have to add in with Gen, I do the same thing. I’ve gotten better and found out somethings I actually like but the truth is I adjust who I am drastically by who I’m around. I’m still a big puzzle. That was a sad realization. I hate those things in school and college where its describe yourself, introduce yourself. Those fucking suck. I just couldn’t feel comfortable. I still don’t have a laugh, just a fake chuckle. If I get drunk I laugh loud and snort but it doesn’t sound or feel right still. Its like I don’t know what to do so I just flounder about. Very awkward. Real friends are hard to find, because if I’m around them enough I adjust to them and it gets weird, or they notice I change and call me fake.

“…I know I’d be stressed if I were constantly told I’m less of a man if I’m not playing football or working in a manly occupation that involved large wrenches and heavy industrial tools”

Seriously, PZ? You would be stressed? I find that hard to believe. Okay, maybe when you were in junior high school, but today? That’s crazy. You’re able to stand up to terrible death threats but you’d get emotionally stressed by the teasing of jocks? I don’t buy that for a second. In fact it sounds kind of patronizing when you go on to say…

“…so I can sympathize with the limited choices given women”

Excuse me, you mean you can sympathize with limited choices given high school girls who are not emotionally mature enough to take a personal stand against societal conformity. Let’s not make excuses and blame society to console 40-year old women, shall we?

“…oh, you aren’t wearing a bikini on your lithe body with the large breasts? Then you’re an ugly dyke.”

And again, why should this teasing bother a mature person? I’m sorry, maybe if I actually believed PZ gets stressed today when jocks tease him, I might be able to take any of this stuff seriosuly. But until then, LMFAO!

You must be pretty ignorant to not see the link between flashy cars and dolled up women and certain men’s need to show off trophies.

So much fail.

1)Using the phrase “dolled up women” is projecting your own prejudices. Why should you care whether a woman is “dolled up” or makeup-free?

Why do you assume I cared about that? What prejudice is it supposed to be? No, you’re the one projecting. The “dolled up” bit was directly relevant to my context, not a general comment about women choosing to use make-up and dress in a specific way. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. Being “dolled up” is also a reference to the feminine stereotype that is forced upon women. Being feminine is a hell of a lot more than make-up and sexy clothes. Is that what you think?

In any case, it was a direct reference to the link between flashy cars and models and the way certain types of men show them off. A link that is often played on in advertisement.

2)Why am I the ignorant one for not seeing what YOU perceive to be a “link” between men and using cars/women as statements of virility? You made the “link” (following Caine), so it is up to you to provide the evidence. Evidenceless assertions won’t fly here, Cupcake.

I’ve gotten better and found out somethings I actually like but the truth is I adjust who I am drastically by who I’m around.

Oh yeah. I did that for decades on end. Even now, if I’m at a social function (which I avoid like the plague) I’ll find myself starting to do that and have to make a conscious effort to stop it.

I’m still a big puzzle. That was a sad realization.

[old broad] You’re still very young, give yourself time. [/old broad]

I hate those things in school and college where its describe yourself, introduce yourself. Those fucking suck. I just couldn’t feel comfortable.

You are far from alone on that one. They more than fucking suck, they are a nightmare, a welter of confusion for puzzle people. And they usually end up an exercise in creative fictional writing.

I still don’t have a laugh, just a fake chuckle. If I get drunk I laugh loud and snort but it doesn’t sound or feel right still. Its like I don’t know what to do so I just flounder about. Very awkward.

I know. I went so long without a laugh. It’s hard to explain to people just how awful that is, how isolated and alone it makes you feel and how it reinforces how incomplete you are and feel. I remember being called on it once. When I was about 15 or so, I was talking with a friend and she said something funny, I laughed. She looked at me very sharply and said “now you have Kathy’s laugh.” I was terrified and quickly found somewhere else to be. It felt like stealing and I had just got caught. You will find your laugh, know that. One day, it will be there.

Real friends are hard to find, because if I’m around them enough I adjust to them and it gets weird, or they notice I change and call me fake.

I know. You’re getting stronger every day though, and you’ll get through this. You’ll be able to have real friends. You do have real friends here and I know that only helps a bit, because we can’t come over and chat or watch a movie with you, but we are your friends and we are okay with you being honest and being in the midst of putting your puzzle together.

Species8472, “PaulG” has been banned, once again. An old troll, older than we even thought. “mercurial”, who is also trolling this thread, is not worth responding to, as it’s mercurial muse, a known troll with the aim to derail discussions.

You are far from alone on that one. They more than fucking suck, they are a nightmare, a welter of confusion for puzzle people. And they usually end up an exercise in creative fictional writing.

Oh god. You are so right. Mastered that one quick though. In 8th grade we had to write an autobiography. Not just a page, but with chapters and pictures and everything. I fucking faked that shit, all of it. The saddest part? My teacher had written sad faces all over it, with words of encouragement. All I thought was “Fuck, if she only knew“. I couldn’t even fake happiness but now I can at least fake positive.

I know. You’re getting stronger every day though, and you’ll get through this. You’ll be able to have real friends. You do have real friends here and I know that only helps a bit, because we can’t come over and chat or watch a movie with you, but we are your friends and we are okay with you being honest and being in the midst of putting your puzzle together.

Yeah, I had that same problem when doing that sort of shit when I was young, and got the same sort of reactions from the teacher. It’s because I hadn’t had enough experience with other people and their families. I didn’t know what it was like to be happy.

Species8472, “PaulG” has been banned, once again. An old troll, older than we even thought. “mercurial”, who is also trolling this thread, is not worth responding to, as it’s mercurial muse, a known troll with the aim to derail discussions.

Yeah, I just started where I left off last night before I went to bed. Noticed after I replied that he got banned.

I’m quite used to trolls actually. I don’t usually get offended by them, but I sometimes respond if I feel like it. It is also fun to corner trolls if you have the energy and time to see it through :)

But here’s the crux of the problem:
you write: “..That is easier said than done and like I said some women are living an authentic life while liking things society approves of. The problem is the chilly climates, the pressure to do shit. How do we remove that? Well, talking about it and raising awareness for one really fucking helps, which is what we are doing.”

How do you change the pressure to do shit? The easiest way, is you can simply stop letting that pressure affect you. (I’m assuming you’re not an impressionable 16-year old anymore, but forgive me if I’m mistaken).

As for protecting your child against societal conformity and peer pressure, that’s a problem shared by both girls and boys. The only thing you can do as a parent is try to instill self-confidence in your child so that when she or he gets older, they are able to shed their conformist skin when the time comes.

I previously wrote: “..Think of that woman in Saudi Arabia who recently decided she was going to drive a car. And damn it, she did.”

You responded: “…This smacks of “this is little shit, get over it! Think of women who are in the middle east!”

No, that’s not it at all. It was a positive message of inspiration, saying that if she can do it in Saudi Arabia, any woman can challenge conformity (with varying degrees of cost). I wasn’t dismissing your problems here in the states. I agree they exist and need to be solved so you can be happy. But changing society exactly to your liking will not come in your lifetime. In the meantime, live an authentiuc life. Be an example for other individuals. That is what makes for lasting change.

Yeah, I had that same problem when doing that sort of shit when I was young, and got the same sort of reactions from the teacher. It’s because I hadn’t had enough experience with other people and their families. I didn’t know what it was like to be happy.

Yeah, I had to steal experiences and personalities (or at least excuses) for my family and parents. It sucked to get caught up in a lie because you’ve had to fabricate every damn thing. So hard to keep it all straight. So embarrassing. Everyone just assumes you a fake and a liar, no one thinks to why.

Yeah, I had to steal experiences and personalities (or at least excuses) for my family and parents. It sucked to get caught up in a lie because you’ve had to fabricate every damn thing. So hard to keep it all straight. So embarrassing. Everyone just assumes you a fake and a liar, no one thinks to why.

I didn’t have the luxury of stealing personalities for my family/parents when I was grades 1 through 8, because I had been stuck in a Catholic school, a neighbourhood school where my grandparents were active and well known. I was not supposed to speak about A or my father, so I didn’t, ever. Not that I wanted to anyway.

Once I got into a public HS, that changed and I could freely fabricate, which was a relief, rather than a stressor. Thing was, I was excellent by that time at fabricating, weaving stories. At 14, I was a professional fake. One of the hardest things for me, in my whole life so far, was stopping that. I had to stop, because I hit a point where all the fakery, the different masks I would don, were becoming real to me. It was a dangerous point in my life.

It takes tremendous courage to face all that and deal with it. Don’t forget that, don’t ever forget just how much raw courage you have.

Yep, I agree. Sometimes, though, it’s best to ignore, like in mercurial’s case, where the only aim is to derail. The actual conversations happening are far more important and I hate to see them lost.

Too true. I seem to have issues sorting out the two though. I got sucked into a tirade of crap with, who was it? Dumbass, I think? In another recent feminism thread. Man, was that a mistake. I think it was Caine that finally got me to shut up about him and let the thread continue.

I didn’t have the luxury of stealing personalities for my family/parents when I was grades 1 through 8, because I had been stuck in a Catholic school, a neighbourhood school where my grandparents were active and well known. I was not supposed to speak about A or my father, so I didn’t, ever. Not that I wanted to anyway.

Once I got into a public HS, that changed and I could freely fabricate, which was a relief, rather than a stressor. Thing was, I was excellent by that time at fabricating, weaving stories. At 14, I was a professional fake. One of the hardest things for me, in my whole life so far, was stopping that. I had to stop, because I hit a point where all the fakery, the different masks I would don, were becoming real to me. It was a dangerous point in my life.

It takes tremendous courage to face all that and deal with it. Don’t forget that, don’t ever forget just how much raw courage you have.

Funny, I had the exact opposite experience. From 5-13 I lived in a small town with my father where everyone knew everyone. But only the family really knew what was going on but their strategy was deny, deny, deny. So they looked to me to explain away if anything happened or questions came up. I was even responsible to feed them the lies. Of course, if anything went wrong with it, it was my fault.

For instance, reasons why Dad doesn’t go to any school functions? Working? Well, he wasn’t there, I was at work I should know! Well, it was a different side job, very embarrassing trying to support us without help, he’s so proud…blah blah blah

Dad didn’t sign Dare forms? Oh we go to this church with his new girlfriend, hoping to settle down again and they think I should stay innocent…blah blah blah. All a joke, he did have out of town “girlfriends” but was a fall down drunk who did coke. At the time I was even drinking away the pain at school. I was just scared to get caught.

Dad was smart enough to go along with the lies and but I was got beaten even if it was perfect, like “Why would you say this?” blah blah blah.

So relieved when we finally moved away and I could just re-invent if anyone asked. I was never very popular so it never really mattered at first. Then I was in the same school for a year and shit got tough to keep straight. After that I just moved around so much, I just didn’t bother to try and keep it straight anymore. Too much work.

In the shelter system with my daughter was the toughest though. Fuck that sucked.

J_A_L, I see. A very different situation from mine. I didn’t move locations as much as I got shunted around from this bit of family to that bit of family, to that other bit of family, then bounced back to this bit, that bit, the other bit, lather, rinse, repeat. All the bits were in the same area though.

I’d be interested* to read Mercurial Muse’s thoughts** on mental illness. He seems remarkably convinced that stress is something that can easily be thought away, I wonder how far that conviction extends. I also wonder where it would go in terms of things like “free will” and “personal responsibility” and whether or not these things were at odds with modern medicine’s understanding of mental illness.

Louis

*By “interested” I mean, erm, well let’s just say I reckon I can predict those views, I’d just like to see him articulate them.

** I am being predictively very generous based on past trollery from MM. Hey it’s Christmas in 2 and a bit months, and I am the “Give them enough rope” Santa!

I wish you wouldn’t, because his moronic trolling to derail has not changed and we’ve been discussing things which are very difficult to talk about and there’s a lot of value in that, for us and for people who might be reading. I dislike the thought of all that being derailed for someone who wants nothing more to take a shit in the middle of these discussions, repeatedly.

There’s a certain strange beauty to this end of the thread. We have two narratives entwined, related yet not touching. In one we find a privilege blinded fool who believes his victim blaming to be somehow helpful. In the other, two voices relating exactly the sort of stories that fool needs to shed his toxic privilege, had he but

There’s a certain strange beauty to this end of the thread. We have two narratives entwined, related yet not touching. In one we find a privilege blinded fool who believes his victim blaming to be somehow helpful. In the other, two voices relating exactly the sort of heartbreaking true stories that that fool needs to shed his toxic privilege, had he but the empathy to hear and understand them. That contrast, it’s enough to make me weep for it throws the whole range of the human condition into stark relief.

I am aware PZ does do a lot in terms of inequality amongst us free thinkers and I appreciate what he does, it is just my opinion that he should focus his efforts away from this (video games) kinda stuff.

1) You vastly underestimate this problem, especially when viewed as a smaller part of a whole Which was, you know, my original fucking point.

2) Who the fuck do you think you are to tell the blogger what he should/should not be doing with his platform*?

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I actually know what goes on in a group of teenage girls, I wasn’t born a girl so it wouldn’t be fair for me to guess about their social pressures.

Have you tried, you know, listening to girls and women? You admit that you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, so that’s a good start, I guess.

Guys, like social pressures for girls, do get shit (mostly sarcastic shit) if they’re not growing up to be a “man”. Even if you’re not a guy, I’m sure you would be aware of that. A guy couldn’t buy a hair straightener (or any other girl-ish item) without his friends calling him a fa**ot.

Wait a minute…

You have NO IDEA! the pressures that girls face, but I’m supposed to be able to automatically empathize/sympathize with men’s struggles?

Is this a case of “there’s no women on Pharyngula” or are you really that dense?

A couple of points: A guy being called a “faggot” is another symptom of a deeply sexists society– he doesn’t act manly enough, so there must be something wrong with him. Feminine=gay=bad.

Beyond that, I’ll give more than two fucks about men’s problems when women are, oh I don’t know, paid the same wage and don’t have to worry about being raped.

How am I being sexist? How am I what is wrong with society?

Because stating that the topic at hand isn’t worth discussing is a silencing tactic.

If you read the comments that deal with the OP, there’s a nice organic flow to conversation– they start with video games and parenting and broaden from there. How is this not an important conversation?

Try explain things rationally and carefully, get your point across and you may have to be nice (to get rid of the stereotypic image of a feminist) so the guy actually listens to you and takes in what you say and maybe even understand and agrees with you.

You know, it’s not my job to educate you and I’m pretty fucking pissed that you expect me to. I’m here for the lulz, sweetheart, not your stupid ass.

But I’ll take your advice into consideration. After all, what will people think? It’s not like this rough-and-tumble comments section has ever changed anyone’s mind.

Oh wait, it has. Many times over the course of the past few months. So you can take your tone trolling and your “useful” advice and shove it.

Asshole.

*You know what I do when I see a post that doesn’t interest me? I skip it. I don’t whine about how PZ could be doing more important things with his time.

you may have to be nice (to get rid of the stereotypic image of a feminist) so the guy actually listens to you and takes in what you say and maybe even understand and agrees with you.

So, the woman just has to be nice and get down on her knees and gently persuade a man to give her the time of day and he might, he just might listen and if she was nice enough and really, really lucky, he might even understand!

And you don’t see how you’re a sexist asspimple? Amazing. In that little bit of your bullshit that was quoted, you have expressed and reinforced entrenched sexist attitudes and speech (well, writing).

Again, with the “women must be nice” crap. Girls are conditioned to be nice and non-assertive from early childhood. Did you read Hairhead’s post @166? Let me guess, that would be a big fat no, because you spouting your bullshit and sexist tripe all over is ever so much more important than bothering to read what people (who aren’t you) are saying.

It is not our job to educate you. The fact that you blithely write sexism filled posts and manage to ask what’s wrong with society…fuck, you’re too thick.

“I’ve been in Zerple’s situation, twice. I couldn’t understand when my first husband complained that I was making more money than him why that was a problem, because we HAD MORE FREAKING MONEY!!! Who cares who is making it. How about instead of whining, the man tries to find a better job/friends if it bothers him so much.”

That’s part of why I was so confused by everyone’s outrage. I’ve seen this scenario play out before too, and I’ve talked to plenty of women who have gone through it.

Personally, if my wife were making more money than me, I’d dance because we’d have, at a minimum about $250k/yr in our combines salaries.

Also, Cameron, you are so damn buried in privilege, I’m surprised you can breathe. Again, referencing the bit of yours I quoted in #486, you’re oozing privilege. You expect that a woman must behave a certain way simply in order for you to listen. You think that men must only be approached a certain way by a woman because men are…men are what, Cameron? Special? In need of coddling? Stupid? What?

It’s probably a bit out of context now, but just wanted to thank Dhorvath, Species8472 and Merridol for their replies.

just quoting a few tid bits (as I suck with tags).

Johan,
Not all of us have the luxury of maintaining a permanent calm demeanour on topics like this. Don’t take it as a personal attack, so much as an artifact of frustration that you don’t share.

I understand. And I realise how naive I was posting what I did in such vague terms, without thinking it could be hurtfull or annoying in some way.

I tried not taking the harshness personally, though it was quite a huge slap in the face ;).

If you want to distinguish yourself from that, please do! With clearer ideas, or a demonstrated willingness to learn (ie to seek out information yourself and assimilate it)

We don’t always wait to be highly educated on a subject to start tossing around our opinions (at our own peril!).

I’ve rarely discussed sexism. The rare times were with a feminist girfriend. But then we’de quickly agree that we disagreed… and then I’d have to buy her some chocolate :p.

I just didn’t realise what I had to distinguish myself from, I didn’t give much thought as how I formulated and the vocabulary I used.
And I definately didn’t do any research on the subject beforehand.
I guess I didn’t realise on what territory I was treading.
Sorry for that.

I’ll definately inform myself a bit more about behavioural studies. I’m currently starting a second year in a university that accentuates on ape ethology, so that will prove very interesting.

Zerple, has no one ever told you it’s gauche to yak about your salary? There are people here, on Pharyngula (and everywhere) who are seriously struggling to make ends meet and people who are struggling to find employment. Your thoughtlessness is noted.

@Caine, I’m new. I didn’t know that. Can I delete the post? I’m not trying to be offensive, I was just trying to agree with the poster who said it didn’t make sense to be upset about having more money.

That’s part of why I was so confused by everyone’s outrage. I’ve seen this scenario play out before too, and I’ve talked to plenty of women who have gone through it.

Oh really?

What part of

I appreciate that you were trying to illustrate how sexism hurts both men and women. What I hope you can see now is that you didn’t succeed. You ended up illustrating how sexism hurts women, and how sexism enables men to hurt women, even in the context of an intimate, caring relationship. I hope you can see that this is revelatory of certain blind spots of yours, that you seemed to think you were offering an illustration of how sexism hurts men, but really you were showing how sexism enables men to be assholes to women and get away with it.